Hundreds of asylum seekers unable to access GPs or schools for months as Home Office contractors failed to meet standards, report finds

Hundreds of asylum seekers have been unable to access basic services such as family doctors for more than 12 weeks because private firms contracted by the Home Office to deliver asylum accommodation failed to meet acceptable standards, a watchdog report has revealed.

More than 1,000 people claiming asylum were placed in hotels each night in the seven months to March 2020, rather than in dedicated housing for asylum seekers, meaning charities and local health services have struggled to provide services to them, according to the National Audit Office (NAO).

In its report on asylum accommodation and support, the NAO said the Home Office had failed to monitor the contractual requirements of Mears, Serco and Clearsprings – the three companies awarded new asylum contracts in 2019 – to ensure they were delivering services, which culminated in vulnerable people’s needs not being met.

New asylum seekers in the UK are housed in “initial accommodation” and are then meant to be placed into longer-term housing within 35 days. But 981 people who had arrived by the end of December 2019 stayed in initial accommodation for at least 86 days, during which they were not able to register with a GP practice or enrol their children into school, according to the NAO.

The number of people in hotels is likely to be considerably higher now, as the contractors procured 33 hotels across the country to house asylum seekers at the end of March, when the Home Office ordered them to source additional accommodation in anticipation of backlogs in the system, following the decision to pause asylum evictions in response to Covid-19.

The providers had to manage a sharp increase in the number of new asylum seekers requiring accommodation during the contract transition. Between July and October 2019, the number of asylum seekers in initial accommodation increased by 96 per cent as arrivals rose, averaging 2,800, yet the number of people in longer-term housing has fallen, states the report.

Both Serco and Mears told the NAO that some houses they took over from outgoing providers were below the standards required by the new contract, meaning increased maintenance work was needed, making it harder to move people into longer-term housing on time.

Migrant Help, the organisation awarded the Home Office contract for the provision of asylum support services – known as Advice, Issue Reporting and Eligibility Assistance services (AIRE) – in September 2019, has meanwhile answered only one-fifth of calls to its helpline, the report said.

Two per cent of calls were answered within a minute, against an expected 90 per cent, with 50 per cent of those calling the service waiting for more than an hour.

Over the same period, 2,800 asylum seekers did not receive an induction briefing within one day of moving into initial accommodation, while Migrant Help took on average three to four times longer than expected to complete application forms for failed asylum seekers who were facing destitution.

The NAO concluded that the AIRE service failed its users in its early months and despite some improvements, the service has “not yet delivered consistently acceptable performance”.

A spokesperson for Migrant Help told The Independent: "We recognise that in the early months of the new AIRE contract our services fell below the standard expected. This was caused by a number of factors, including the demand that exceeded even the highest estimated volumes on which the service model was based."

They said it had put improvement measures in place and that, as a result, the helpline answered 94 per cent of calls within 60 seconds in February and March 2020.

The NAO criticised the Home Office for not monitoring all contractual requirements, not publishing data on the contracts’ performance – contrary to government policy – and relying on providers to submit their own performance data, which it said was sometimes incomplete.

The department is paying an estimated 28 per cent more to providers under the new contracts, to which it had made some improvements, including introducing obligations to focus on vulnerable people and to provide single-gendered washing facilities in the initial accommodation.

However, the NAO said it was not clear whether the deals would extract value for money.

Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said: "The Home Office has replaced the previous asylum seeker accommodation and support contracts to improve services at a higher but realistic cost. However, performance standards were missed in initial months, which left some asylum seekers facing difficulties accessing suitable housing and specialist support and advice.

“The department has shown that it has learned from the contracts and has laid the foundations of a better service. The department now needs to show that it has addressed the challenges we identify, in order to deliver value for money over the life of these contracts.”

Ewan Roberts, centre manager at Asylum Link Merseyside, said the charity recognised many of the issues it raised in the report, including the delays on the Migrant Help phone line, which he said had left volunteers “on hold, twiddling their thumbs, while people in need went without any financial support or accommodation”.

He added: “The transition period exposed deep rooted problems with a system that is unfeeling, inflexible and causes serious damage to people. The solution requires massive change: we need independent, public scrutiny of these contracts and transparency from the Home Office.”

Paul Hook, director of Asylum Matters, echoed his concerns, saying: “These contracts have been plagued by systemic problems since their inception, resulting in a chronic lack of transparency and poor accommodation standards. We have grave concerns that unless action is finally taken as we emerge out of lockdown, familiar problems will recur and the asylum system will continue to lurch from crisis to crisis.”

Stephen Hale, chief executive of Refugee Action, added: “Home Office ministers must act fast to reform the asylum system and ensure people who have already been through so much do not suffer further from poverty, poor accommodation and homelessness.”

SNP MP Stuart McDonald said: "The massive spike in hotel use is really concerning, as is the number of people having to stay in initial accommodation for long periods. More generally, the NAO report is massively frustrating as it shows that despite endless problems and criticisms, the Home Office simply tweaked the old and flawed contracts, instead of doing the total redesign that was needed. So we are stuck with many of the same problems as before."

A Mears spokesperson said it had been a "time of transition" as the company "worked to make improvements and bring accommodation and support up to the new contract standards".

They added: "Mears have procured 1,265 new properties and handed back 881 from the contract. We have also carried out improvements to 1,118 properties. The overall number of asylum seekers we are supporting has increased from around 12,000 when we started the contract, to 18,000 now, causing some delays in moving service users from initial accommodation due to the difficulties of procuring suitable additional dispersed accommodation in the timeframes.

"As the Covid-19 lockdown begins to ease, we are now able to restart our programme of improvements and new procurement."

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The UK has a long and proud record of providing protection to those who need it. The health and wellbeing of those seeking protection has and always will be the priority, and we will continue to provide support to those that need it.

“The NAO is clear in this report that the Home Office is paying a realistic price for service provider contracts and has learnt the lessons from previous arrangements. The Home Office continues to work closely with service providers to ensure our asylum system is providing the necessary support to those who genuinely need it.”