Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether asylum accommodation providers are required to inform her Department of the number of residents who are physically harmed at their properties.

The safety and wellbeing of asylum seekers in our care is of paramount importance to the Home Office. We expect high standards from all of our providers, and we have a robust governance framework in place to manage service delivery of the Asylum Accommodation Support Contracts (AASC). The contracts stipulate that all incidents must be reported to the Home Office immediately by the accommodation providers.

We have also worked closely with providers and stakeholders to develop a safeguarding assurance framework which is available at Asylum support contracts safeguarding framework - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

The Asylum Support Contracts Safeguarding Framework is a supplementary document to others that are publicly available. The framework is designed to provide a high-level overview of the responsibilities of all parties and is to be read in conjunction with the safeguarding elements of the Accommodation and Support Contracts (AASC) - Schedule 2 - and the Advice, Issue Reporting and Eligibility Contract (AIRE) - AIRE Contract. These contracts were designed with safeguarding of the individual at their heart.