Written evidence submitted by Dr. Melissa Weihmayer (AAC0031)

Written evidence for building the capacity of local authorities to support asylum accommodation

1. Background

1. This written evidence provides solutions for improved engagement and joint working between asylum accommodation providers and the Home Office and local authorities, and through them, local health services, NGOs and other local partners.

2. Dr. Weihmayer studies how local authorities build capacity to respond to asylum. She conducted a series of consultations and interviews (over 27) with local authority and other migration stakeholders across London from October 2021 until June 2023. A core element of this research followed a 6-month “design lab” capacity-building process bringing together 11 London borough councils from different parties and areas of the city to improve their responses to asylum. This process was funded by a programme called Asylum Welcome[1].

3. For this research, Dr. Weihmayer collaborated with the Mayor of London’s Greater London Authority (GLA), the cross-party political organization representing borough councils in London called London Councils, the immigration thinktank British Future, and the charity Refugees in Effective and Active Partnership (REAP).

4. This research is published as part of a PhD thesis entitled Approaches for analyzing the local governance of forced migration completed at the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2024[2].

2. Summary

1. Local authorities in London faced a rapid increase of people seeking asylum since 2020. They felt underprepared to address what they perceived as significant unmet needs of people seeking asylum in their boroughs because most borough councils had not dealt with asylum accommodation before. Since the introduction of the dispersal system in 1999, people seeking asylum were generally sent away from London to regions with cheaper accommodation[3]. The exception were five of London’s 32 boroughs (excluding the City of London), where people seeking asylum were housed in accommodation within the community (known as ‘dispersal accommodation’). Though the councils in these boroughs had significant experience hosting people seeking asylum, they still faced persistent challenges in adequately supporting this population.

2. The introduction of hotel accommodation affected London disproportionately compared to other parts of the United Kingdom. By March 2023, London housed over a fifth of people seeking asylum supported by the government (23.2%), up from 14.2% three years earlier.[4] Of that group, two-thirds (16,337 people) were being accommodated in hotels. Hotels also affected some London boroughs disproportionately, as the procurement of hotels was largely based on where they happened to be located rather than as the result of a capacity-assessment of the local area. For example, the London boroughs of Hillingdon and Hounslow hosted 20% of people seeking asylum supported by the government in the city because of the presence of hotels around Heathrow Airport.

3. Local authorities expressed frustration that the decision-making processes by the Home Office and private accommodation providers were not transparent and not communicated adequately to enable borough councils to prepare a response.

4. Councils responded to asylum by providing both essential and complementary “wrap-around” services. Services and support that local authorities considered essential were linked to their statutory requirements, such as enrolling children into schools and ensuring minimum housing standards were met, while “wrap-around” services contributed towards long-term integration in the borough and elsewhere in the UK. These included enrolling people in English language courses and providing information sessions about how to search for housing in the private sector. Local authorities were adamant that both types of services were necessary to support people seeking asylum as soon as they arrived in the borough in order to improve social cohesion and prevent homelessness.

5. Only a few councils had data sharing protocols in place with private accommodation providers to inform their responses; these agreements needed to be negotiated piecemeal / council-by-council and hence was raised as an example of inefficient collaboration. A general lack of data left councils in the dark about how many people seeking asylum were being accommodated in their boroughs, where they were residing, under what conditions, and what kinds of needs for local services they could be expected to have (e.g. how many were school-age children, pregnant women, etc.).

3. Structure of the Design Labs:

1. A “design lab” process brought together 11 borough councils to discuss their diverse challenges and test solutions.

2. The “design lab” process took place over six months from January until June 2023. It entailed five core day-long workshops with at least two members from each participating council. These members included an officer in charge of operational matters and a more senior decision-maker in charge of strategy so discussions could link the two. The organizations British Future and REAP facilitated each workshop and brought in guest speakers tailored to different topics within the integration journey of a person seeking asylum.

3. The process created a much-needed space for collaboration and network-building. Participants were able to get to know officers from other councils working on migration, refugee resettlement and asylum; these networks were said to have been fractured due to remote working and rapidly changing activity during the COVID-19 pandemic.

4. The process also created an opportunity to test solutions. Each participating council developed a pilot project according to the priorities of their boroughs. British Future and REAP provided one-on-one troubleshooting support in between the workshops. The councils presented the results of their pilot projects along with lessons learned at the end of the process. Because councils could discuss different approaches to similar problems, the process overall also engendered substantial innovation in designing asylum responses[5].

5. Documentation on each council’s response and solutions discussed during the workshops were collated into an online toolkit to share learning more widely.

4. Findings

1. My research demonstrated that London’s borough council officers were initially operating in a ‘reactive mode’, unable to plan ahead and sufficiently resource their service provision. They argued this wasted limited council funding because they were responding to one-off “crises” rather than coming up with multisectoral, council-wide responses that could prevent crises from happening. For example, they hoped to connect people seeking asylum to mental health services early rather than respond to an emergency involving a potential suicide attempt.

2. Undertaking a capacity-building process through the “design labs” enabled councils to shift towards a more ‘proactive mode’ of asylum response. Proactivity not only improved the quality of the responses but also made more efficient use of resources.

3. Local authorities needed to progress in three areas to respond more proactively, as examples below will show:

1. resolving dilemmas to identify their role as local government in supporting people seeking asylum,

2. building confidence through partnerships and knowledge-sharing, and

3. developing skills and competences[6] to implement policy actions, including reallocating existing resources and mobilizing new ones.

4. They resolved the following key dilemmas to enable them to take a stronger role in this policy area:

1. They understood people seeking asylum not as a ‘transient population’ but as potential long-term borough residents needing their care akin to other vulnerable populations. This helped them identify where it was most efficient to include people seeking asylum in existing systems of service provision, minimizing the need for bespoke or parallel services where possible.

2. They were uniquely well-equipped to add value to the asylum accommodation system in two key areas: first, through providing expertise in safeguarding vulnerable populations – for example through existing Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hubs (MASH) or targeted trainings for hotel staff on identifying victims of domestic violence – and second, through conducting housing assessments to improve the quality and safety of procured hotels and dispersal accommodation. For example, a coalition of local partners including the Metropolitan Police conducted an assessment of the risks of procuring a hotel for future asylum accommodation. The coalition identified significant risks to safety in the area around the hotel and from to the conditions in the hotel itself, informing a decision to reject the procurement plan by private sector accommodation providers.

3. Councils struggled with the idea that they might be duplicating services already paid for by central government funding. These were services the private sector accommodation providers were contractually obliged to provide, such as communicating safeguarding referral systems or providing basic equipment for parents with newborn children. Council officers were made aware that these were not being provided or were not accessible by people seeking asylum. Given the vulnerability of these populations, council officers felt that offering the services themselves at the risk of duplication was a worthwhile use of limited council resources.

4. These discussions informed coalitions between councils in London and with regional stakeholders. They advocated together for new resources so asylum responses would not take funding away from and therefore adversely affect other vulnerable populations in the borough.

5. Conclusions

1. In conclusion, local authorities in London struggled to clarify their role in this policy area given their exclusion from the governance frameworks and inadequate communication from private sector accommodation providers and the Home Office.

2. However, they demonstrated significant progress in supporting people seeking asylum over a short period, shifting from a reactive to a more proactive mode of response.

3. Dedicated capacity-building processes such as the “design lab” process funded by the Asylum Welcome programme contributed to this shift.

4. It did so by enabling the discussion and resolution of key dilemmas faced, building confidence through networks and knowledge-sharing, and developing skills and competences important for this rapidly changing, under-resourced and complex policy area.

5. My research suggests overall that dedicated resources for capacity-building would enable councils in London and in other cities and regions of the UK to more effectively expand their role in service provision and support to people seeking asylum.

Feb 2025