The Asylum Housing Pilot Project — a personal view
Kate Wareing, chief executive of Soha Housing in Oxfordshire, comments on the government pilot scheme she has campaigned for (see previous newsletters).
A total of £500 million has been pledged by the UK government toward trialling alternatives to the current provision of asylum accommodation through hotels and private sector contracts. This is phenomenally welcome and provides the potential to prove that investing in homes in council and housing association ownership will both save the country huge sums of money and deliver much-needed additional social housing.
The first major pilot out of the blocks is trialling the provision of support to local authorities to purchase or refurbish housing to provide temporary accommodation to those awaiting asylum. This funding is part of the broader asylum accommodation strategy and is intended to enable councils to build or acquire around 900 new homes under the pilot.
The scheme at present is seen as working exclusively with local authorities. No grant conditions have yet been finalised, but the target is to have the fund up and running before the end of the financial year, with a two-year timeline for the acquisition of properties.
Around 200 local authorities are believed to have expressed an interest, a small number of which will be chosen to take the scheme forward. The government is planning on basing the fund on the current conditions for the Local Authority Housing Fund. Whilst much better than inaction, I give careful thought to how the design of this fund could deliver much better outcomes — both immediately and in the longer term.
There is a case for more geographically nuanced grant rates and for the money to enable new homes to be purchased and allocated at the discretion of landlords, in exchange for an equivalent number of homes (from across existing stock) to be made available for use by the Home Office/local authority as temporary accommodation. This would help both politically and in terms of management, with new homes available to meet existing housing needs of current tenants (i.e. address overcrowding, meet needs for adapted homes, etc.) and then properties for temporary use being able to be swapped in and out across the wider stock base.
As yet, it is also unclear whether the existing asylum accommodation contracts mean accommodation procured would need to be leased back to the current contractors for them to manage. If this were to be a condition, it could be a serious issue for local authorities who are potentially interested in the pilot.
Other pilot initiatives are also taking place (for example, bringing empty homes back in to use, exploring a ‘for profit’ model of raising private finance to fund purchase). These are still being led by the Home Office.
There is also a Good Faith Partnership-sponsored project looking at how asylum accommodation could be delivered through strategic mayoral partnerships. It’s focusing on working in the South West and in the North East and trying to both prove the concept for future devolution of responsibilities. It is also exploring whether this shift in the accommodation model can be part of future provision. The project has pulled a great group of people together and is gaining good traction.
I remain hopeful that we can collectively remove barriers and make this new approach real — not only in terms of what this will mean for improving the lives of those in the asylum system, but also spending public money more wisely, and beginning to make a real difference in terms of how we provide temporary accommodation.
