Issue - meetings

Report of the Director – Neighbourhoods

The Assistant Director for Public Protection introduced the Asylum Dispersal and Contingency Accommodation including HMOs report which was the result of a scrutiny request submitted by Councillor Phillips. He explained that prior to the adoption of the asylum dispersal model there had been a contingency hotel located within the Borough near Whatton, which had housed, on average, over 60 individuals, with officers concerned about the safety of those residents given the highly rural location in which the hotel was located. He confirmed that that had now closed. He said that as of April 2022 the Government had introduced a full dispersal model, with the Borough currently having 7 properties located within it as part of this scheme, five situated in West Bridgford, one in Cotgrave and one in Radcliffe on Trent, with the majority being HMOs, which meant that they were over three stories or accommodated more than five people and which were an important part of the national housing market.

The Home Office representative explained that the Home Office had a legal obligation to accommodate asylum seekers who would otherwise be destitute whilst their asylum application was being considered as part of the Immigration and Asylum Act of 1999. The Home Office representative said that dispersal areas (DA) had always been a significant part of how the Home Office had undertaken that legal obligation and played a significant role in how asylum seekers were accommodated in a diffused and dispersed way through communities.

The Home Office representative said that the Home Office had initially adopted a policy of voluntary dispersal which had worked well when the asylum population had been at a lower level. However, as the asylum population increased it had become unfeasible for a small number of local authorities to accommodate the greater number of asylum seekers. In light of this, in 2022 the Home Office moved to adopt a policy of full dispersal, where rather than local authorities volunteering to be dispersal areas, every area became a potential dispersal area. The Home Office representative said that to ensure that full dispersal was undertaken in a structured and considered manner, targets were introduced and in 2023 Regional Allocation Plans (RAPs) introduced a target requiring 100,000 bed spaces across the Country. Through a process of informal negotiation with Strategic Migration Partnerships, local authorities and providers for the Home Office, each local authority was given a notional target for their area.

The Home Office representative noted that the targets had not necessarily been well evidenced and feedback received from various agencies led to the Home Office, in collaboration with other government departments, and in conjunction with the LGA, developing Asylum Accommodation Plans (AAPs) which provided evidence-based delivery plans underpinned by an index model. The Home Office representative said that the indexing took account of a range of factors, including local homeless population levels, availability of schools, dentists and GPs, and other local authority resettlement schemes, with information being continuously refreshed. The aim of which was to create targets which  ...  view the full minutes text for item 13