Homeless locals priced out of city as asylum seeker crisis fills hotels
Home Office snapping up rooms, sparking price war with council
THE Home Office has been accused of ‘throwing money’ at Birmingham hotels, B&Bs and landlords to take in asylum seekers – forcing housing officials to look out of the city for emergency accommodation for homeless families.
Locations that the council ‘would not use’ because of quality concerns are being used to house some of those desperate for a safe refuge, it was claimed, while at more desirable premises the Home Office is paying inflated fees that the city council cannot compete with.
It is causing an alleged price war, with the homeless and asylum seekers caught in the middle.
Cllr Sharon Thompson, housing lead for the city, said she was ‘very frustrated’ that the Home Office strategy was making an already difficult situation in the city worse.
She said: “Temporary accommodation and bed and breakfasts that we have stopped using, the Home Office is trying to snap up. They are also targeting provision we do use, offering higher fees.
“It creates a market that shouldn’t exist, they will offer prices that we cannot compete with, budget wise, I don’t know how. We would not pay the prices they seem able to budget for.”
“There are also other local authorities placing people here, from across the country.
“It is a terrible situation for all the people involved.
“It means we are forced to place families out of the city when we want to keep them as close as possible. We are attempting to stop this but the Home Office acts independently, and is not obliged to inform us when placing asylum seekers here,” she said.
Concerns around the quality of support provided and the isolation facing those trapped with little money and no right to work have heightened as the numbers involved rise, in part because of the desperately slow processing of asylum claims.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “The use of hotels to house asylum seekers is unacceptable. We remain committed to making every effort to reduce hotel use and limit the burden on the taxpayer and the local communities.
“While hotels do not provide a long-term solution, they do offer
There are also other local authorities placing people here, from across the country. It is a terrible situation for all the people involved. Cllr Sharon Thompson
adequate space, secure and clean accommodation.
“We continue to engage with local authorities as early as possible whenever sites are used for asylum accommodation and work to ensure arrangements are safe for hotel residents and local people.”
Home Secretary Suella Braverman has described the current asylum system as under extreme pressure and costing the country £3 billion a
year and rising, including around £6 million a day on hotel accommodation.
She has launched the controversial ‘Stop the Boats’ – or Illegal Migration – Bill in a bid to end illegal entry as a route to asylum in the UK.
The Home Office refused to comment on the number of asylum seekers currently housed in and around Birmingham in B&Bs and hotels, or address the claims made by Cllr Thompson.
But officials said they would “continue to ensure the accommodation provided is safe, secure, leaves no
one destitute and is appropriate for an individual’s needs.”
They also said they scrutinise locations to ensure this. On the wider policy, the Home Office claimed: “We are taking immediate action to bring the asylum backlog down.
“We’ve set out new plans to clear the initial asylum decision backlog of legacy cases by the end of 2023.
“We have also doubled the number of asylum caseworkers to more than 1,000, and we will double it again while rolling out a successful pilot scheme nationwide to boost the number of claims processed.”