Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many asylum seekers living in temporary dispersal accommodation have been there for one year or more.

Temporary Dispersal Accommodation is a short-term contingency mechanism by which a provider may accommodate a service user in a suitable alternative address whilst a longer term property is made available, for example when an dispersal property is temporarily inaccessible whilst repair or specialist adaptations are undertaken.

The Home Office considers all such requests by providers on a case by case basis and monitors its use closely. However information on the length of stay of people in TDA is not collated in central statistical databases, and is not recorded in a format suitable for publication. This information could only be provided at disproportionate cost by examination of individual occupancy records.