Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government, in the light of the National Audit Office’s report Investigation into asylum accommodation, published on 20 March, which found that (1) using large sites to accommodate asylum seekers could cost £46 million more than using hotels, and (2) the Home Office rated their own plans as “high risk or undeliverable”, why the large sites accommodation programme will be continued.

The Government has always been clear that the use of asylum hotels is unacceptable, and that’s why we acted swiftly to reduce the impact on local communities by moving asylum seekers on to barges and former military sites.

Thanks to the actions the Government has taken to maximise the use of existing space and our work to cut small boat crossings by a third last year, the cost of hotels will fall, and we are now closing dozens of asylum hotels every month to return them to communities.

Large sites provide adequate and functional accommodation for asylum seekers and are designed to be as self-sufficient as possible, helping to minimise the impact on local communities and services. They reduce demand on an already pressured private rental market and their larger capacity allows the Home Office to be agile in responding to fluctuations in demand.

It is better value for money for the taxpayer to continue with these sites than to continue using hotels. The latest assessment of value for money, which excludes committed or spent costs in line with the Green Book methodology, shows that large sites would be £153 million cheaper than hotels.

Despite the need to stand up large sites at speed, controls were in place to assure value for money for the taxpayer. Operational challenges at the sites have changed our costs since original estimates. We continue to keep costs under review while developing ways to reduce it.

The latest Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA) review has upgraded the rating of the programme, meaning that the successful delivery of time, quality and cost is feasible.