Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many asylum accommodation centres UKVI (a) inspected and (b) found to be falling short of the required standards of safe, habitable and fit for purpose accommodation that complies with decent homes standard and other relevant housing standards in each of the last five years.

All asylum accommodation is inspected on a regular basis by the provider and the Home Office in accordance with the performance standards defined in the contract. Performance is monitored via the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) regime, details of which are set out in the contracts and cover the provision of the whole service. The property inspection process forms part of the Home Office’s rigorous contract compliance regime which ensures that the required performance standards expected of all providers are met.

Where inspected property does not meet the required standards there are strict time limits on resolving property defects; failure to meet those time limits can result in service credits being applied through financial deduction from monthly invoices. These are monitored formally, on a monthly basis, at Contract Management meetings between the providers and representatives of UK Visas and Immigration.

The Home Office does not publish data on accommodation inspections or the value of service credit that have been accrued on the contracts.

In line with government transparency commitments details of the standards required are already in the public domain. The particular document that details the standards is titled ‘COMPASS Project Schedule 2 - Statement of Requirements’ and is available on the Contracts Finder Archive on the Data.Gov.UK Website at:https://data.gov.uk/data/contracts-finder-archive/contract/487962/