The Home Office is battling to regain control of the asylum system (Image: PA)
Asylum seekers have been given houses in more than 80 per cent of council areas, a Home Office official admitted. More migrants are being moved across the country to ease the burden on local authorities crippled by a lack of housing, overwhelmed health services and growing community frustrations. Joanna Rowland, Director General of Customer Services at the Home Office, told a group of MPs the number of council areas with asylum accommodation has increased over the past year from around 70% to 81%.
Ministers are under intense pressure to move migrants out of hotel rooms because of the astronomical cost to taxpayers.
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Some 15,000 migrants have crossed the Channel this year (Image: PA)
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is under pressure to stop using hotels for migrants (Image: Getty)
But fears are likely to intensify that more areas could be impacted by Britain’s asylum accommodation crisis.
Ms Rowland told the Home Affairs Select Committee: “One of the things we need to guard against is uncontrolled levels of dispersed accommodation.
“Another priority for the Government is levelling up the allocation of dispersed accommodation across local authorities. There has been success to-date, in that there is now only 19% of local authorities without any dispersed accommodation, up from 30% a year ago.
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“But we need to do the hotel exit and the alternative accommodation in a highly controlled way because if it was just an edict to close hotels and get into dispersed [accommodation], then we would end up with an uneven concentration.
“Some local authorities, I know, are feeling that acutely."
Some 32,345 migrants are staying in up to 210 hotels. By contrast, 66,683 are living in rented homes across the country.
The Chartered Institute of Housing warned a single migrant staying in a hotel costs ￡54,000 a year.
Border Security and Asylum Minister Dame Angela Eagle said ministers want to use more abandoned tower blocks, “old teacher training colleges”, or former student accommodation as a substitute for hotels and renting properties.
Ms Eagle added: “The idea is to move from hotels to this kind of thing, rather than old military bases.”
And migrants claiming to be children are being given the “benefit of the doubt” until further tests are carried out, the Home Office minister admitted.
Dame Eagle backed calls for more scientific age testing, but admitted it isn't ready to be rolled out to test thousands of people every year.
She told the Home Affairs Select Committee: “If there’s a child that ends up mistakenly in adult accommodation, then the local authority has to be contacted.
“There is an issue about age assessment, if people claim they are a child when we first come across them and there is a dispute about that, then there’s a decision taken.
“If that person continues to contest the fact that they have been found to be an adult when they say they are a child, as soon as they arrive they can contact the local authority and do a much-longer standing assessment. Whilst that is done, they are given the benefit of the doubt and moved into the children’s care system.
“Large numbers of people, in the past, have claimed they are children when they are adults, and vice versa, and there is a safeguarding issue either way. There are dangers on either side.
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“There are circumstances and things that have to be done.”
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Ms Eagle added of scientific tests: “Clearly scientific age assessment or photographic age verification is a very important part of what we’re trying to develop, so we can have more of an assurance, particularly on the cusp of child and adult, when someone comes to us with no ID and claims they are children.
“There are safeguarding issues either way, if you let an adult into the children’s system.
“We have got to try to do some work on that. The scientific age assessment approach is still being trialled because the capacity for it to be accurate isn’t enough for it to be deployed at the moment, but I’m personally much more confident about facial age verification.”
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