Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what lessons her Department has learned from the use of Napier and Penally barracks as temporary asylum accommodation centres.
The current global pandemic has presented us with significant challenges when it comes to the provision of asylum accommodation. During these unprecedented times the Home Office has acted quickly to source contingency accommodation to create additional capacity to ensure that our obligations can be met in full.
The length of time such sites remain in use is dependent on future demand for asylum accommodation, however we are clear contingency accommodation will only be used for as long as absolutely necessary.
The Napier Barracks and Penally training camp sites have been in operation for almost three months. They are fit for purpose, safe and equipped in line with existing contractual requirements for asylum accommodation. We continue to work closely with our provider and partners to identify opportunities for improvement, as we do across our entire accommodation estate.
We work with local stakeholders, including the relevant Clinical Commissioning Group and health boards, to ensure access to healthcare services for service users in asylum support accommodation.