Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the Written Ministerial Statement of 8 December 2016, HCWS335, on Asylum Accommodation, how many (a) welfare officers and (b) property management staff have been funded in part or fully from the £1million allocated for that purpose; how much of that £1million has been spent to date; what the new higher price band referred to is; and how many asylum seekers have been accommodated in the new asylum dispersal areas referred to.

The Home Office is committed to ensuring that destitute asylum seekers are accommodated in safe, secure and suitable accommodation whilst their claims are considered and have worked closely with accommodation providers to develop improvements to the service over the lifetime of the contract. The Home Office does not publish data on the number or cost of welfare officers or property management staff employed by asylum accommodation providers, however proposals for additionally funded service provision from each of the provider’s have been assessed and approved. It is a matter for individual providers to utilise the available funding as they deem appropriate. The Department will continue to monitor the providers closely to ensure that they comply with the requirements of the contract and continue these improvements as part of the contract extension.

Payments made to the service providers are published as part of the transparency data where we publish monthly spend data with all providers where it is in excess of £25k

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/asylum-transparency-data-november-2017

Data on the numbers of asylum seekers in local authority areas is published and can be found at (Asylum Vol 4. Table 16q).

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/immigration-statistics-july-to-september-2017/how-many-people-do-we-grant-asylum-or-protection-to