Parliamentary Committees and Public Enquiries
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Asylum accommodation: Dysfunctional culture at Home Office must be confronted
Unacceptable levels of public money wasted amid deep concern that programme to acquire large sites for asylum accommodation went drastically wrong.
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- Public Accounts Committee
A troubling culture at the Home Office allows key controls in its processes to be easily abandoned. In a report published today, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) warns that, if the Home Office fails to address its dysfunctional culture of repeated mistakes and weak internal challenge, it risks repeating the failures seen in the poorly managed acquisition of former HMP Northeye for use as asylum accommodation.
Northeye was purchased by the Home Office with £15.4m of public money. This was more than double what its owners had paid for it a year previously, with the Home Office also told building repairs could cost over £20m. It also received clear warnings the site would require significant remediation work, including risks around asbestos, contaminated ground, and that it might not be possible to connect the site to utilities. The plan had been for it to provide 1,400 bed spaces for asylum seekers, but the Home Office has now decided Northeye is unsuitable for this purpose, cannot be used, and intends to dispose of it.
The report finds that it has often appeared the Home Office has prioritised appearing to address the issue of asylum accommodation, over value for money and effective implementation. The PAC warns that much of the Home Office’s learning from its poor management of Northeye focuses on improving processes, rather than directly addressing a culture in which key controls could go by the wayside. It recommends Home Office set out how the profile of control and assurance will be raised across the department.
The PAC repeatedly heard from the Home Office that it was working at pace to reduce its reliance on costly hotel accommodation for asylum seekers. The report notes that this does not excuse it from its responsibility to safeguard taxpayers' money. Further, the Home Office knew about Northeye in May ’22, with contracts exchanged in March ’23, meaning there was not an unusual rush to purchase it. It did not even commission a proper valuation, so it did not know whether it was paying a fair market price for the property. The Home Office further argued that it had to be innovative in its approach to securing such sites. The report notes that buying land and buildings is not inherently innovative.
The Home Office has since accepted it did not strike the right balance between due diligence and operating at pace, and that it has identified “over 1,000” lessons from its acquisition of large asylum accommodation sites. The report notes that some of these 'lessons', one of which was to work to ensure that such acquisitions are in the “right places,” should have been evident at the time, raising concerns as to whether such an unacceptable waste of public money could happen again. It remains unclear to the PAC how Home Office plans to strengthen processes to avoid similar failings in future acquisitions.
The report further warns that Home Office efforts to reduce reliance on hotels in asylum accommodation could increase homelessness and drive up rental prices, placing unacceptable financial pressure on local authorities. It notes positive steps on joint working with local government, but warns that it remains to be seen whether the Home Office will be able to achieve planned savings in the cost of supporting asylum seekers without pushing costs to other parts of the system.
Chair comment
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP, Chair of the Committee, said: “Northeye was one of a series of failed Home Office acquisitions for large asylum accommodation sites, totalling a cost to the public purse of almost a hundred million pounds of taxpayers’ money. Treasury rules for safeguarding public money are there for a reason and should only be overridden in extreme circumstances. This case clearly demonstrates why those safeguards should normally be followed. The Home Office says it has learned the lessons from its disastrously managed acquisition of the Northeye site. These are lessons for which the taxpayer has paid a steep price.
“It is deeply frustrating that advice was offered to the Home Office, from expert property teams from other parts of Government, on the Northeye acquisition that the Home Office chose not to use. When officials are working under pressure the public must still have confidence that appropriate controls are being followed in Government, to secure the best outcomes for the people it is trying to help. The Northeye site should serve as an example to all Departments that ignoring warnings and abandoning controls for a quick outcome is fraught with risk. We hope the recommendations in our report help Government to avoid cases like this in the future.”
Further information
Original article link: https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/127/public-accounts-committee/news/205080/asylum-accommodation-dysfunctional-culture-at-home-office-must-be-confronted/