Councils raise concern over Government plans to determine annual cap on refugees and to end 50 asylum hotel contracts

The Government is to consult local authorities on plans to determine an annual cap on the number of refugees resettled in the UK each year, but councils have warned it might be difficult to predict arrival numbers.

On 20 October, the Home Office said the UK-wide consultation would “seek to better understand the capacity of local authorities to accommodate and support vulnerable and at-risk people coming to the UK via safe and legal routes”.

The cap is to be agreed in Parliament and will launch in January 2025.

The Local Government Association (LGA) has raised concerns about councils being asked to commit to numbers of arrivals, noting that it might be difficult for councils to predict potential arrival numbers across both asylum and resettlement and therefore their “capacity to support new arrivals and the additional housing needed”.

This comes as the Government has announced plans to end contracts with 50 hotels housing asylum seekers by the end of January.

Speaking in the House of Commons, Minister for Immigration, Robert Jenrick, said the Home Office had written to local authorities and MPs “to inform them that we will now be exiting the first asylum hotels”.

He noted that the hotels should not be housing illegal migrants “at the expense of the taxpayer”, and that the hotels should be “assets to their local communities”.

The Minister added that the Government would continue to house people on the Bibby Stockholm barge in Portland. Up to 500 men will eventually live on the vessel while they await the outcome of asylum applications.

Responding to the announcement on hotel closures, Cllr Shaun Davies, Chair of the Local Government Association, said: “Hotel closures have a direct impact on councils and local government wants to play an active role in working with government on the decisions on which hotels to close. We also need advance engagement on what other alternatives, including large sites, will be opened up both for those leaving hotels and for ongoing new arrivals. 

“Combined pressures from these many schemes are growing on councils and there continues to be an issue across the refugee and asylum system. We need a joined-up approach across central and local government to the cumulative pressures on local services from all asylum and resettlement programmes. This needs to include urgent solutions to our pressing housing needs in the short and the long term across all the schemes that welcome new arrivals to the UK.”

The LGA shared its “increasing concern” over the numbers of asylum seekers presenting as homeless which it argued was likely to “dramatically increase” when Home Office accommodation was withdrawn.

The organisation called for a “joint and funded approach” nationally, regionally and locally to manage the move on from asylum accommodation.

Lottie Winson