Types of accommodation

United Kingdom

Country Report: Types of accommodation Last updated: 30/05/23

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Initial accommodation centres

Reception centres, called initial accommodation, each accommodate around 200 people – fewer in Glasgow and Northern Ireland. These centres are the usual first accommodation for any asylum seeker who asks for support and is not immediately detained, apart from unaccompanied children. If a place cannot be found on the first night after claim, asylum seekers may be accommodated in an interim hostel in Croydon while accommodation is found, or in hotels in any region where the initial accommodation is full. Accommodation in the initial accommodation centres is usually full board with limited cash provided.

The short-term use of bed and breakfast accommodation has tended to rise in times of an increase in applications, although in its response to the Home Affairs Select Committee the government stated that the accommodation providers had taken measures to lessen the need for this. The drawback is that people accommodated in a hotel, even if only for one or two nights, have limited or no access to many of the reception-related rights granted to asylum seekers, with reported cases of persons having only restricted access to accommodation. The consequence of such temporary ‘emergency’ accommodation is that it additionally delays their access to the support system and other welfare services to which they are entitled, as it may take a couple of days before they access advice and complete an application for asylum support.[1]

Asylum seekers should not stay in initial accommodation for any longer than 3-4 weeks[2] but there can be dispersal backlogs and it is common to find asylum seekers stuck in initial accommodation for many months due to a lack of dispersal accommodation.[3] There was a huge increase in the use of hotel and other full-board accommodation during 2020 and 2021, this continued in 2022. The Home Office issued a statement about the use of hotels and other temporary accommodation.[4] The use of hotels for anything other than a very short period continues to be criticised, including in a report from the Refugee Council in July 2022.[5]

Challenges have been made to the use of hotels for young people initially identified as adults but awaiting social work assessments, including in 2021 a case where the young people had been assessed by Home Office employed social workers.[6]

If the asylum seeker qualifies for Section 95 support he or she is moved into smaller units, mainly flats and shared houses, in the same region, but as regions are large this may not be within travelling distance of their legal representative if they have one. Dispersal Accommodation is in the North, Midlands and South West of England and in Wales and Scotland, very limited numbers are housed in the South of England or in London. Asylum seekers have no choice of location. If asylum seekers are not detained after screening there is no distinction in the initial accommodation based on the claim or its route.

Where a person has family and friends with whom they can live they can claim cash support. There are reports that some asylum seekers take only cash support and continue to ‘sofa-hop’ i.e. move from one person to another, staying on floors and in shelters, because they do not want to leave London. The Home Office may consider a request to be accommodated in London or the South East if the applicant is in receipt of therapeutic services from the Helen Bamber Foundation or the NGO Freedom from Torture.

Initial accommodation centres, hotels and former military barracks are used to accommodate people receiving section 98 support and some receiving section 95 support. The number of people supported under section 98 at the end of 2022 was 49,493 (almost twice as many than at the end of 2021).

A court ruled that the provision from local authorities to house people otherwise at risk of street homelessness can include those with no recourse to public funds, including people refused asylum and appeal rights exhausted.[7]

 

Dispersed accommodation

All accommodation for asylum seekers is managed by three large private companies under contract to the Home Office, much of which is provided though sub-contracts to smaller companies. The assessment process for eligibility for the accommodation remains with the Home Office, which is ultimately responsible in law for the provision of accommodation. The companies remain responsible to the Home Office under the terms of their contracts to provide and manage the accommodation. New contracts were approved in January 2019 for a ten-year period.[8]

A UK charity has written a guide to the 2019 contracts and has details about all types of accommodation and services covered.[9]

The contract between the Home Office and the private companies requires that families shall be housed in self-contained accommodation.[10] In practice there is some use of hostel-type accommodation for families with small children, and some lone parent families are housed with unrelated families, though nuclear families are normally kept together.[11] Accommodation frequently fails to meet the needs of supported persons, particularly those with children or mobility and health needs. Asylum accommodation has been repeatedly criticised for failing to provide security, respect for privacy and basic levels of hygiene and safety, particularly for women; in the media and in the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee report published in December 2018.[12] The same committee looked at the government’s Covid-19 preparedness with a focus on Institutional Accommodation in 2020.[13]

The most common form of accommodation after the initial period in the initial accommodation centres is in privately owned flats and houses, managed by the companies contracted to the Home Office, or by their sub-contractors.

Section 4 support can only be provided as a package including accommodation, in a location determined by the Home Office, and ‘facilities for accommodation’ i.e. the ASPEN card with no facility for cash. Consequently, the recipient cannot choose to receive financial support only (as they can with Section 95) and continue to live with family members who are not included in the support application. This means that the family will be split, possibly over some distance, the person on Section 4 having no cash with which to travel to visit.

 

 

 

[1] Information provided by Refugee Action.

[2] Home Office, A guide to living in asylum accommodation, available at: https://bit.ly/30qVIHA

[3] Home Affairs Select Committee, Asylum Accommodation, January 2017, available at: http://bit.ly/2n0KUwI.

[4]  Home Office media blog, available at: https://bit.ly/30rr0OJ.

[5] Refugee Council, Lives on Hold: Experiences of people living in hotel asylum accommodation, July 2022, available at: https://bit.ly/3VcF1KX.

[6]  High Court, AB and ors v Brent, 13 October 2021, available at: https://bit.ly/33SdRmP.

[7] Shelter explanatory piece on the ‘Everyone in’ provision and inclusion of those with NRPF https://bit.ly/3qJUEfY

[8] Home Office, ‘New asylum accommodation contracts awarded’, 8 January 2019, available at: https://bit.ly/2SUJgdM.

[9]  Asylum Matters; The Asylum Accommodation and Support Contracts – a guide, 2019, https://bit.ly/38vIlYs.

[10] Home Office, Compass Project: Schedule 2, Accommodation and Transport, Statement of Requirements, B.8.

[11] Evidence given to the Parliamentary Enquiry on Asylum Support for Children and Young People.

[12] House of Commons, Asylum accommodation: Replacing COMPASS, December 2018, available at: https://bit.ly/2A164kM.

[13] Home Affairs Select Committee; Home Office preparedness for Covid-19; Institutional accommodation https://bit.ly/3MEGCW0.

Table of contents

  • Statistics
  • Overview of the legal framework
  • Overview of the main changes since the previous report update
  • Asylum Procedure
  • Reception Conditions
  • Detention of Asylum Seekers
  • Content of International Protection