Oral evidence: Asylum accommodation - Follow up, HC 38
Oral evidence, 9 June 2026.
Witnesses
Steve Lakey, Clare Pearson and Kath Wilson.
Chair
I thank our witnesses for this one-off session that we are holding as the Home Affairs Select Committee on asylum accommodation on large sites. We did a big piece of work that was published late last year on how the asylum accommodation contracts worked. We have taken an interest in the two large sites that have been proposed—one that is up and running and one that is being worked on, I believe. We are keen to see what lessons were learned from previous large sites being stood up. Can I ask our witnesses to introduce themselves, starting perhaps with you, Steve?
Steve Lakey
Thank you. I am Steve Lakey, Managing Director for Clearsprings Ready Homes.
Clare Pearson
I am Clare Pearson, Group Operations Director for Clearsprings.
Kath Wilson
I am Kathleen Wilson, Group Compliance Director for Clearsprings.
Chair
Thank you. We are speaking to the Minister afterwards and I do want to say that the Minister is in the room, just so that everyone is aware that he is here. We will start our questioning with Lewis Atkinson.
Lewis Atkinson
Thank you for coming in this afternoon. Previous large sites operated by Clearsprings, including Napier and Wethersfield, had significant issues. How have you learned from past mistakes to ensure they are not repeated at Crowborough?
Steve Lakey
The whole process starts with opening the site, beginning with consultation with the various entities that work with the site. We have been working closely with the Home Office, the local stakeholders, the local health bodies and also the local authority before the site was opened to make sure that lots of plans were in place. One major challenge that we had at previous sites was around engagement and making sure that there were suitable programmes and staffing structures in place to promote engagement and keep people occupied while they were on site. All those were put in place prior to opening at Crowborough, and all those lessons that were put in place for that. On top of that, some of the other issues were around site inspection and the processes for governance and sub-contractor governance. New processes have been put in place at Crowborough to manage all those expectations and all those issues. I am pleased to say that, so far, everything has been going well and we have not been having the same challenges.
Lewis Atkinson
The characterisation you have made of good engagement has been, it is fair to say, disputed, including by the local Member of Parliament—Madam Deputy Speaker, the right honourable Nusrat Ghani MP. What would you say to people who say that that engagement has not been good enough?
Steve Lakey
Probably that would be a question for the Home Office because it leads on the main engagement. Our engagement is much at the operational day-to-day level, liaising with the people on site, liaising with health, and making sure that the individual cases are managed effectively. The consultation and the engagement around the opening of the site would be a Home Office function.
Lewis Atkinson
Is the accommodation at Crowborough and your management of it significantly different from how it was at Wethersfield?
Steve Lakey
The main difference at Crowborough is that it is a different site. It is a smaller site. It is laid out slightly differently to Wethersfield, but it has predominantly been around that engagement with the people on site, making sure there are lots of activities and the ability for people to leave the site if necessary, and keeping people engaged with the local community and the things that are going on. The major difference is getting that activity programme and making sure that people are engaged as early as possible from the day they arrive. That was the major change.
Robbie Moore
To confirm, the maximum occupancy at Crowborough is 540?
Steve Lakey
That is correct.
Robbie Moore
What is the occupancy rate at the moment?
Clare Pearson
It is 500 or thereabouts. If you give me a moment, I will give you the exact figure.
Robbie Moore
While you are pulling up that, maybe you could explain whether you experienced any challenges as a result of the increased occupancy at Crowborough since the site first became occupied.
Steve Lakey
Not internally on the site. There was a little external attention, as we know, but other than that, no. It has been, at Crowborough, quite encouraging to see that getting the early engagement, getting the early communications with the residents going on to site, and making sure that people are fully briefed, they know what will happen and how long they will be there has helped to keep those incidents to an absolute minimum.
Robbie Moore
It sounds as if you might be near or at full capacity. I do not know the numbers yet. Are you prepared to be at that full capacity of 540?
Steve Lakey
Yes.
Robbie Moore
How does the ratio of the number of staff to asylum seekers at Crowborough compared to previous hotel accommodation?
Steve Lakey
It is different; it is a different set up and a different requirement. There are more staff as a ratio currently at Crowborough and Wethersfield than there would have been in a similar sized hotel.
Robbie Moore
Who determines that ratio? Is it you or the Home Office?
Steve Lakey
That is done during a conversation as part of setting up the site, and so that will be done jointly between us and the Home Office, agreeing what is required for the different staff groups—catering, cleaning, security, support. That will be done at the beginning of the set up.
Robbie Moore
To be clear, there are more staff per asylum seeker at Crowborough than there would be in typical hotel asylum accommodation?
Steve Lakey
It depends on the type, layout and style of the hotel. I would need to go away and do some analysis to say that with absolute confidence, but my belief is that generally, of a similar number of people being looked after, there would be slightly more staff.
Robbie Moore
Is that your understanding based on the increased ratio from previous experiences not working well and there needing to be more staff per asylum seeker?
Steve Lakey
It is the nature of the site and how the people are managed. No, I would not say it was necessarily as a result of a significant change, but more the nature of the site and how it needs to be managed.
Robbie Moore
What is the current likely maximum length of stay for an asylum seeker based at Crowborough?
Steve Lakey
Eighty-two days.
Robbie Moore
What is the length of the contract at Crowborough?
Clare Pearson
It is 12 months. We are on the site for 12 months.
Robbie Moore
It is only 12 months, with an average length of stay of 82 days?
Steve Lakey
No, a maximum.
Robbie Moore
A maximum of 82?
Clare Pearson
Yes.
Robbie Moore
Is that built into the contract?
Steve Lakey
Yes.
Jo White
What is the ratio and how does that compare with hotel use? Also, how does it differ from hotel accommodation?
Steve Lakey
I guess responsibility. The things that we are responsible for at Crowborough versus what we would be responsible for in a hotel are slightly different because the hotel is owned by the landlord, for example, and so there would be repair and maintenance and facilities management functions. Those things are conducted by a Home Office contractor, not us, and so there is a different responsibility there. Ratios would depend on the layout and the type of the site. For example, I can think of one hotel that we use that has lots of floors. There would be a security guard on each one of those floors. More floors would necessarily require more people. That is what I mean. It does depend on the layout of the site. For the exact ratios, I would have to go away and do the analysis and get those figures. I do not have the ratio figures. Again, it will depend on the staff, security, catering staff, cleaning staff, and then the various shift patterns. We can provide that information.
Chris Murray
Thanks for coming in. Mr Lakey, when you were here before, you told us that your company was able to extract higher profits from accommodating someone in a hotel than in dispersal accommodation. What is the cost per night per asylum seeker that you are currently charging the Home Office for this large site?
Steve Lakey
It varies because the price is made up of a number of different elements, from a management fee to a nightly rate. Certainly we could provide that information in written form.
Chris Murray
If we added it all together and divided it by 500, what would that number be?
Steve Lakey
I do not have that figure in front of me in that layout—
Chris Murray
Which one?
Steve Lakey
But we could provide it—
Chris Murray
I am not following what is unknown.
Steve Lakey
The cost of the site is broken down into different elements. It is not all per person per night as a rate. There is a management fee element and an element for food and an element for security. It does not break down dividing one by the other to give you a per person per night rate. It will also depend on the occupancy. If it is fully occupied, you would be dividing that fixed number by a different number.
Chris Murray
We know that the average for a hotel is £145 a night, and we know that the average for Wethersfield, the other site that you run, is £132. Do you anticipate that this model of providing asylum accommodation will lead to any savings in cost for the taxpayer?
Steve Lakey
That is probably not a question that I would be able to answer accurately or in any detail because I do not know the other side of the costings around the rent, the management of the site and those things. All I can talk about is the cost element for the part of the service that we provide. If I compare the cost element for what we provide in a hotel versus the cost element for what we provide on the large site, it is about half. It is about 50% of the cost.
Chris Murray
You are charging the Home Office about half.
Steve Lakey
Give or take, yes but, again, it is not an exact like for like because slightly different elements are covered in a hotel and on the large site.
Chris Murray
How much have your profits gone down by? Have they gone down by half as well?
Steve Lakey
Our profit is based on a percentage, and we have a fixed contractual percentage. That percentage has not changed. The cash figure will change because it will be a percentage of a smaller turnover figure.
Chris Murray
When you went to Wethersfield, it ended up costing an extra £150 million more than you had told the Home Office at the beginning. How much do you anticipate this costing the Home Office more?
Steve Lakey
I do not. That is not a question for me, I am afraid. All I can talk about is the price that we charge and what we charge the price for, and then it is for the Home Office to work the rest out.
Robbie Moore
I am still waiting for a figure on the occupancy at the moment.
Clare Pearson
My apologies. It is 480, and we are increasing by two lots of 30 per week.
Robbie Moore
I am keen to understand how many asylum seekers you are anticipating getting through Crowborough over the 12-month period of the contract. The occupancy total is 540. If you are mandated for 82 days, that is a turnover of four times, which would be a maximum of 2,160 asylum seekers over that period of time. Your occupancy rate is not full yet and it has been much lower previously. How far into the contract are we so far?
Clare Pearson
We are four months into the contract.
Robbie Moore
We are four months into the contract, and we are still not at full occupancy. From a taxpayer’s point of view, how many asylum seekers are you anticipating will go through this system over the 12-month period?
Steve Lakey
I do not know. That is the short answer to that, simply because 82 days is a maximum but is not necessarily an average or a target. Somebody could go into Crowborough and, realistically, move in a week or they might move within those 82 days. That decision about filling Crowborough and moving people off Crowborough to the next step in the asylum process is a Home Office process. We are not involved in that process, other than by providing the information and the data for those decisions to be made by the Home Office.
Robbie Moore
Finally just from me, following on from the questions from Chris to do with total cost per individual, I know that you said that it is broken down differently but, regardless of the fixed cost associated with the whole site and how it is broken down, there will still be a maximum figure that can be divided per individual. Do you know what that is likely to be? If not now—which is disappointing given this is one of the things that we are wanting to get into—are you able to write to the Committee with that information?
Steve Lakey
We are privy only to the financial information for the services that we deliver. As a classic example, in a hotel we would be privy to the largest cost, which would be the rent element. That would be probably by far the largest cost in a hotel. This is not a site that we have a relationship with the landlord with. The Home Office has that relationship directly with MOD, I assume, and that element of cost we are not aware of. That element of cost would be in the calculation for a hotel and so I could tell you what that was. I do not know what the rent or the site costs would be for the Home Office. That is a figure that only the Home Office would know. The only element of that equation that I know is the service element that we provide, which would be less than half in a hotel.
Chair
After the 82 days, where do they go? Do you know?
Steve Lakey
Yes. People will be moved into dispersed accommodation. They will move on to the next part. The large site is initial accommodation, and then people will move on to dispersed accommodation from there.
Chair
Has anyone been in there for only a week?
Steve Lakey
I do not know. I would have to check the figures. I hear it happens anecdotally, but I do not know if it has happened at Crowborough.
Chair
You said it is a different type of site. What do you mean by that?
Steve Lakey
The layout and style and size. It is much smaller. It has more of a training camp feel. It is on a slight slope and it overlooks lots of open fields. The look, the feel and the layout of the site is slightly different.
Chair
We will move on to some of the issues around the site and communications, security and safeguarding with Ben Maguire.
Ben Maguire
Thanks, Chair, and thanks for coming in today. I will change tack slightly and talk about your communications with the Home Office and then, if I may, I will ask a few questions about safeguarding as well. The deputy leader of Wealden district council, Councillor James Partridge, who, I understand, is the local ward councillor for the area as well, described the Home Office as being secretive, evasive, and at crucial moments completely silent, and said that many people and stakeholders have completely lost confidence in it. I am quite interested to hear your experience of communicating with the Home Office, and in particular if it has affected your ability to run the site safely and effectively.
Steve Lakey
I guess for us, because we have worked with the Home Office as a customer for such a long time—through Covid and the small boats and that intense period over the last couple of years—we have direct access, I guess, as its supplier, and so we do not find it difficult or challenging to talk to the Home Office and get that access. We are a party to the conversations and the consultations with local authorities, but we do not play a leading role. We are there as a partner with the Home Office to provide any technical detail that we can.
Ben Maguire
There have been regular protests against the site. Has that led to any operational challenges or safety risks for your staff or the residents there?
Steve Lakey
Definitely, and we have experienced it on most of the larger sites that we have opened over the years. We have developed a series of protocols and practices that help us support the staff and deal with those situations as they arise. Close working relationships with the local authority and police are absolutely essential.
Ben Maguire
Have you seen specific safeguarding issues at the site?
Steve Lakey
Less so at Crowborough, again predominantly because it is the fourth one now that we have mobilised and so we have a lot more of a formalised process to identify where those challenges might occur and then put the necessary control measures in place.
Ben Maguire
You said less so at Crowborough. What kinds of incidents have you experienced there?
Steve Lakey
At the moment they have been predominantly medical ones, looking at the analysis from incident reports. They will be where people require some form of medical assistance or support and then we would take them off site for them to get that, but nothing specifically relating to the protests or the standing up of the site so far.
Ben Maguire
Have you had any issues with information that you have received from the Home Office on any specific safeguarding cases?
Steve Lakey
Not so far, not that I am aware of—not that has been reported.
Chair
Can I clarify so that we are all absolutely clear on this? With a hotel, you would contract the whole hotel and the Home Office would have to pay you for the whole hotel whether it was full or not. In this case, are you being paid only for the asylum seekers who are being housed in Crowborough at any one time, or are you being paid a fixed amount?
Steve Lakey
We are paid a fixed amount for blocks of people so that we can get the staff ready, get the food ordered in and get everything prepped. We get paid per block of 200. For each block of 200 people, we would get that as a service element.
Chair
If there were not 200 people, would you still get paid for 200 people?
Steve Lakey
It depends where we are in that. I guess if we were at 201, that could be true but, if we were at 199, not so. It is a scale.
Chair
Unlike the hotels, because you are not paying for the rent, it is much more about the provision of services?
Steve Lakey
Absolutely, yes.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy
I want to find out a bit more about your performance and why Clearsprings had a much higher rate of potential non-compliance with contractual requirements in 2024 than other providers.
Steve Lakey
There are two simple answers. One is volume related. By far we were bigger in the hotel space than anybody else. The second main reason is a continuing disagreement about what those service credits are applicable for. Whether they are applicable service credits is still in dispute.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy
I know that you previously reported no failures to meet your maintenance KPIs, but the Home Office inspectors found that not to be the case. Is there a disparity between what you view as meeting your KPIs and how the Home Office inspectors view them?
Steve Lakey
There is a disparity between not necessarily a KPI or a failure but whether the contract says there should be a service credit for it. The disparity is not in whether we believe there was an error that needed to be rectified and whether it was done in the timescale—because we do not pretend to be perfect by any stretch of the imagination—but, contractually, is there an attributable service credit? The attributable service credit element is in dispute. We are not disputing whether there were failures.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy
Do you say that that is the main reason behind the disparity?
Steve Lakey
Yes.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy
What action have you taken to address these issues, and has your non-compliance improved?
Steve Lakey
Yes, multiple actions, the first one and the most important one being about the quality of the service. We have made our process of inspections, sub-contractor management, regular meetings with those sub-contractors, and holding them to account for their performance much more robust. We have seen quite significant performance improvements. We have also been negotiating with the Home Office to close the gap between the understanding of what we believe is service creditable and what it believes is service creditable. Quite successfully, we have reached a point where we have paid back to the Home Office a number of those agreed service credit elements. Yes, definitely, both the performance and also the understanding and the ability for the Home Office to claim the money back have significantly improved.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy
Given all the different pieces of evidence we have, what reassurances can you give us that Clearsprings is delivering the quality of accommodation that the Home Office is paying you to deliver?
Steve Lakey
That is absolutely fair. There are a number. One is the Home Office’s own contract management and engagement functions that have been enhanced, and our own set of statistics and data that we are now able to gather and provide that show that we are doing a lot more inspections than we were before. We are finding the issues and dealing with them much faster. We are definitely seeing that improvement. Our own statistics and a combination of the Home Office’s enhanced inspection process and statistics will show that improvement.
Jo White
You mentioned that you have increased oversight of sub-contractors. What processes have you introduced to improve your due diligence over your sub-contractors?
Steve Lakey
A couple, the main one being the introduction of a new portal. For any major pieces of work that we are asked to fulfil, no matter how urgent the requirement in the future, we now have a bid portal that providers are able to go into and bid for that work. It mirrors the Home Office’s procurement arrangements for bidding. Built into that is a whole new governance suite for driving down multiple layers through the supplier supply chain. It includes things like VAT registration checks, VAT invoicing checks, visits to offices, wanting to see people’s centres of operations so that we can make sure that all that due diligence, all the governance pieces and all the lessons learned over the last 18 months or so can be incorporated into that sign-off process. Now, nobody gets through unless we have had a minimum of three and they have gone through that governance process.
Jo White
How many sub-contractors are you currently using, and how much of your expenditure is on sub-contractors working within the field of asylum accommodation?
Steve Lakey
I would have to go away and do the analysis on that and provide that information, but I am happy to do that and forward that on to the Committee. Right now, we have, for example, insourced our security provision across our estate because we felt it was becoming challenging to find the sub-contractors that we were looking for. We wanted to deliver not just security services but a blend of security and support, and so it was quite a specialist piece of work. We have now gone out and we are about 70% complete in that insourced recruitment piece. We were 150 staff at the beginning of the contract. We are now 850 directly employed. We have employed a lot of those teams internally, either to manage those sub-contractors or to deliver the services directly. Still the predominance of our supply chain is in landlords providing the properties, as you would imagine it would be. We will not be able to do much about that, but the process is much more robust. The predominance of our supply still within these contracts is about the rent and is about finding accommodation. Most of it goes there. We are not looking to take over the service delivery in the hotels, though, because we believe that they are reducing, and our aim and our push and our thrust over the next 12 to 18 months is to come out of hotels and get back to our core business. That will remain sub-contracted, but all the sub-contractors have gone through the new due diligence process. After the challenges that we had with a previous supplier, we put all the supply chain through that governance process. They have now gone through it. As we go forward we will probably look to insource some more of that work. Exact ratios I would have to give you, but we will go away and come back with the exact percentages.
Jo White
Has the Home Office’s sub-contractor assurance framework been fully implemented? If so, what new requirements do you have to meet?
Steve Lakey
It is not fully implemented yet. We are still working with the Home Office on that, but we have modelled our own process and our own system on that and we have started that already. That is the precursor, if you will, to that coming in. We set all our systems and processes up in readiness for it. Again, it goes through a similar level of governance checks at each level of the supply chain as we work down throughout.
Chair
Why has it not been implemented fully yet?
Steve Lakey
That is one for the Home Office. I do not know the answer to that.
Chair
It is a Home Office issue, not your issue?
Steve Lakey
Yes.
Chair
What about sub-sub-contractors? How confident are you that the second level down or even below that is being properly looked after?
Steve Lakey
Very. We started the process. The whole challenge for us was about two or three layers down in the supply chain. The whole thing started there for us. That is where we started. We started with—the lowest denominator is the wrong phrase to use—the furthest down the supply chain that we could get to and then went up from there. Our whole process has been designed to get right down to the lowest possible part of that supply chain and work back up.
Chris Murray
Can I just pick up on this point about meeting your KPIs and the systems that you are putting in place to improve it? We know that previously you had never reported to the Home Office that you had broken your KPIs but, when the Home Office inspected your hotel accommodation, it found that 70% of the time it thought you had broken a KPI.
Steve Lakey
Yes.
Chris Murray
How has that gone down since you have instituted these new systems?
Steve Lakey
Again, it is less about whether it is a KPI failure and more about whether it is service creditable. I know it is—
Chris Murray
I am not sure it is. My question was: how many times does the Home Office think you have broken a KPI when it inspects you now?
Steve Lakey
That is probably a question for the Home Office rather than for us.
Chris Murray
You are being held to account for the KPIs, and so it is a question for you. Is it still 70%?
Steve Lakey
No, but we do not believe it was 70% in the first place.
Chris Murray
My question is not whether you believed it or not or whether you think that was fair. It was 70%. My question is, when the Home Office inspects you now, having put in place all these new processes, what percentage of the time does it think potentially you have breached a KPI?
Steve Lakey
You will have to ask the Home Office.
Chris Murray
Why can you not answer that question?
Steve Lakey
You will have to ask the Home Office what it thinks. You asked me what it thinks it would be. You would have to ask the Home Office what it thinks it would be. I am pressing the point on the interpretation only because it is not about whether we did something right or wrong or whether we failed. It is about whether the contract attributes a service credit to it. Let me talk specifically about the issue that you are talking about—
Chris Murray
Can you do so more clearly? I am failing to follow your argument.
Steve Lakey
Yes, I will use an example. This particular one in the hotels that is driving the view that there is a 70% failure is about whether an underbed locker is a suitable alternative to a chest of drawers in a hotel environment. The argument is whether the contract says a service credit is attributable to a chest of drawers in a hotel room. We say it is not. The Home Office said at the time that it was. That means is that 70% of the hotel rooms had an underbed locker instead of a chest of drawers. I am exaggerating to make the point. That is what I mean about the interpretation. Do we think that the service delivery has significantly improved? Absolutely, yes, because we have spent a lot of time and effort working with the sub-contractors to try to draw up those standards.
Chris Murray
Okay, but with respect, Mr Lakey, it is a bit more than chests of drawers. We have had reports of people being overcrowded, people sleeping in rooms with no curtains, people sleeping in rooms with bedbugs, with vermin and with holes in the roof, people dying and their next-of-kin not being informed, and people dying and the local authority not being informed. It is about more than chests of drawers. Even if it was about chests of drawers, the Home Office contracts you to fulfil a contract. Whether you dispute whether a chest of drawers is provided is irrelevant if the Home Office, the contracting party, the taxpayer, has judged that it should be in the contract. I will go back to my question. Does your view of the fairness of the KPIs matter? Previously, you were found on inspection to be failing to fulfil your KPIs 70% of the time on inspection, despite the fact that you had reported 0% of the time that you were failing them. How often does the Home Office tell you that you are failing your KPIs when it inspects?
Steve Lakey
The Home Office continues its inspection regime. It provides monthly reports on the number of failures—
Chris Murray
Please do not avoid the question. You must have a percentage figure. What is it?
Steve Lakey
I do not have a percentage figure—
Chris Murray
Why not?
Steve Lakey
Because you are assuming that the 70% was agreed, and it is not.
Chris Murray
I do not care whether you agreed it. When you are inspected, it is not about whether you agree with the outcome of the inspection. The inspector makes that call. Previously, 70% of the time you failed an inspection. You have just told us that at huge taxpayer’s expense, on a significant public contract, you have made improvements to meet those inspections. How often do you meet them?
Steve Lakey
I do not have that exact number in the way that you would like me to portray it because it just does not come across as a straight—
Chris Murray
That is unacceptable.
Steve Lakey
Percentage failure, but it does not work like that. The Home Office can probably do provide you with the performance data that it has, which would probably be a better source. That is probably a better way to go.
Chris Murray
We will be asking the Minister that question when he comes because I am interested to know if he has that figure. Let me move on to dispersal accommodation. We know that keeping people in hotels generates more profits to you. It seems like keeping them in large sites generates the same proportion of profits because of your percentage and because of the scale of the contract, which we have not heard evidence will decrease. However, we know that dispersal accommodation is much cheaper for the taxpayer and has better outcomes for communities and asylum seekers. How have you been able to expand dispersal accommodation?
Steve Lakey
It is fantastic news on that front. Thank you for raising that point. On dispersal, absolutely, our main thrust has always been to come away from hotels and to try to get back to our core business, which, as you quite rightly identified, is dispersal accommodation. To do that, we have had negotiations and conversations with the Home Office and with the local authorities and communities about how we can significantly increase dispersal. We have plans in place to increase dispersal by up to 10,000 additional bedspaces and we are about 50% of the way through the proposals to do that. They have been submitted to the Home Office and they are now at the proposal stage. At the moment we are working on the start-up and go-live of those properties, which is a conversation with the local authorities because they will be in communities, and so we need to go through the consultation process to start them up.
Chris Murray
You hold the asylum contract for London. The number for dispersal accommodation in London since September 2025 has gone down. How are you expanding it if it is going down in London?
Steve Lakey
The agreement was only reached in April.
Chris Murray
You said you were halfway through it.
Steve Lakey
Yes. The agreement was reached in April. The brilliant news is we have had a 50% success rate—
Chris Murray
That does not sound brilliant to me if you say the number is going down but it is going up.
Steve Lakey
That is for live bedspaces and numbers of people dispersed and living in those bedspaces. We have been working on procured and proposed ready to go live since April. We have somewhere in the region of about 2,500 bedspaces across the south right now, proposed and ready to go live.
Chair
They are not being used at the moment?
Steve Lakey
No, they have literally been sourced since April. Some of them are, but there is a go-live. We have to bring them on, do the consultation with the local authority, get them furnished, and put people in them. But yes, they are proposed, ready to go, and waiting to be turned live.
Chris Murray
You are telling us you have intentions of moving into dispersal, but you are not doing it yet and—
Steve Lakey
No, we are doing it already. We have 2,500 bedspaces in the proposed pipeline waiting for dispersal—
Chris Murray
You are not doing it yet. It is proposed, but not actual. Meanwhile, you are staying in a system that saw your profits increase 413-fold between 2019 and 2023. Remember that you moved into hotels because there was a pandemic and that is firmly in the rear-view mirror now. Yet your company is still using hotels and a new model of large sites that generates the same level of profits for you and is failing to move to the system that is better for the taxpayer but does not generate the same profits for you. That is a fair analysis, is it not?
Steve Lakey
No, it is not at all.
Chris Murray
We will have to disagree on that.
Steve Lakey
Fair enough.
Chris Murray
My other question for you is about medium sites. When you came to us last time, you said, “The best and fastest route out of hotels is to look at medium-sized sites”, such as student accommodation or office blocks. What progress have you made on that?
Steve Lakey
Again, good. We have about 2,000 live medium-site bedspaces currently, and they are live with service users—
Chris Murray
Are there more?
Steve Lakey
No, they are current ones. In the pipeline, we have 400—when I looked this morning—new bedspaces ready to go live.
Chris Murray
How much have medium-sized sites increased, given you said it was the best way to get out of hotels?
Steve Lakey
Since I was at the Committee and met with you last time, I would have to look at the figures. It is a few hundred since then, but we have now, again in April, had the contract change notice, CCN, negotiated and ready to go to bring those new medium sites on for the rest of this year.
Chris Murray
It has increased by a couple of hundred?
Steve Lakey
In terms of live, but we have a lot more than that in the pipeline waiting to come up.
Chris Murray
We have heard a lot about this pipeline, but—
Steve Lakey
It has to come first. You have to get them in the pipeline before you can turn them live.
Chris Murray
Yes, but it was the pandemic that triggered the move to hotels and you are still using hotels.
Steve Lakey
We have only been working on this pipeline in the last six months, and so it is a six-month pipeline build. It is quite good for six months.
Chris Murray
Have you done any exploratory work with local authorities or third-sector organisations? Has the Home Office asked you to do any work looking at how medium-sized sites might work in communities?
Steve Lakey
We have, yes—lots, in fact. We are working with two local authorities at the moment that have sites that they are hoping to use for social housing, but they are too big for that. We are looking at maybe using them as part social housing, part asylum/DA accommodation. A few conversations are going on at the minute. Basically, half the site would be for asylum, half the site would be for move-on accommodation for when somebody gets a move-on decision.
Chair
What is the cost per person per night in medium sites compared to dispersal accommodation and hotels?
Steve Lakey
I do not have the exact figures, but I am sure we could probably get those. The Home Office could probably provide those. Medium sites are about half the price and then DA is probably a third of that, with my finger in the air.
Chair
Do you have restrictions on how long people can stay in those sites? Do only the large sites have restrictions on the number of days?
Steve Lakey
Yes.
Chair
What is the conversion rate of pipeline bedspaces to actual bedspaces? How long does it take and when do you fill them?
Steve Lakey
It varies because a lot of it will be down to the local authority to give the go-ahead for the site to come on. It does depend on the local authority’s challenges in that particular area. At the moment, the conversion rate is something like 70%, or thereabouts, of stuff that is in the pipeline to going live.
Chair
By 70%, you mean 70% of them become spaces?
Steve Lakey
Yes, 70% become bedspaces.
Margaret Mullane
I personally feel that sometimes when we convert office blocks and that move towards it, they are problematic for local authorities and they are problematic for the people who are in them. Do you see that as a problem up the road?
Steve Lakey
Definitely. In all honesty, we try as best we can to leave those as the higher hanging fruit. If we have to use them, we have to use them, but our preference as best as we can is to use traditional housing stock, standard houses, standard sizes and type HMOs.
Margaret Mullane
They are not often about, are they? Let us be honest. If you have to go back to the office blocks, will that create its own problems?
Steve Lakey
It could well do, yes.
Lewis Atkinson
How does the inspection and compliance regime, both your internal regime and the external regime with the Home Office, vary depending on the site, from dispersal accommodation all the way through to large sites?
Steve Lakey
It is probably done predominantly on impact and so it may vary. It should be pretty standardised because an accommodation unit is an accommodation unit.
Lewis Atkinson
The standards are the same? The standards that are in every bedroom should be the same?
Steve Lakey
Yes, they should be the same across the piece. The contractual standards are the same or similar. They do not vary much. Larger sites will have additional considerations, for example. A large or medium site might require additional security or might require other considerations around the type and nature of the building it is, as opposed to maybe a two-bedroom house in an ordinary street.
Lewis Atkinson
You made a reference before to Home Office inspections. How frequently does the Home Office externally inspect your big sites as opposed to, say, this personal accommodation?
Steve Lakey
There is a continual programme of inspections across both big sites and DA sites. With the big sites, the Home Office will have a presence on site as well and operates out of those sites, and so has that additional presence. The Home Office has a regime and a programme of inspection for both DA and big sites.
Lewis Atkinson
Presumably, the Home Office will not turn up to a dispersal accommodation unit or an individual unit on a regular basis.
Steve Lakey
Fairly regularly, yes.
Lewis Atkinson
For every individual unit?
Steve Lakey
Even for a 23 Acacia Avenue, two-bedroom house, it will come and inspect that. How regularly, I do not know. I would have to look at the statistics per address, but certainly the Home Office is constantly out in the dispersal accommodation portfolio with rolling inspections.
Lewis Atkinson
In terms of good practice and compliance, whatever the sector, to me, the internal compliance assessment matching the external compliance assessment is the key. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Whether it is 70% or whatever, the important thing is that you agree on that because the quality of your internal assurance depends on matching those external standards. Can you tell me where you are on that?
Steve Lakey
Absolutely. We have a monthly inspection process in all the properties, small, large or whatever size they are.
Lewis Atkinson
Internal inspection?
Steve Lakey
Internal inspection. Those internal inspection processes and all the data are open to the Home Office to view and share, and quite often the inspections will be joint. The entire system that we have built internally is based on the Home Office’s system and the contract. It has been built to make sure that it matches and that it aligns across the two, and so it should align.
Lewis Atkinson
It should align but, in percentages, regardless of the number, what is the level of matching in numerical terms between the two? If you are finding 99% compliance but the Home Office is finding 80% compliance, it is a significant discrepancy.
Steve Lakey
It varies depending on what the KPI is measuring. A number of KPIs all measure different things. Three of them are for different maintenance, for example. There is an immediate, must respond to it in an emergency; a medium, and a longer-term more decorative—
Lewis Atkinson
Are you consistently assessing any KPIs as being compliant that the Home Office is consistently assessing as being less compliant?
Steve Lakey
No, but there are still some disputes, it would be fair to say, and those disputes tend to be around that finite definition. I will not say “silly” because that is not the right phrase to use, but it can be over something like the size of a chest of drawers, for example, and whether it is a chest of drawers.
Lewis Atkinson
What steps are you taking to resolve that?
Steve Lakey
We discuss with the Home Office regularly at each of our contract meetings and through the escalation processes to reach an agreed position on some of those things that are around the peripherals. We are not that far away, if that is the question, in our agreement on what is a failure.
Lewis Atkinson
If you were to come back in, say, six months’ time, would you expect to have agreement on the core standards and, therefore, no reason why your internal compliance assessment would differ from the Home Office’s external compliance assessment?
Steve Lakey
Broadly speaking, I would hope so, yes.
Chair
Can I ask one final question? What work are you doing to ensure that dispersal accommodation is properly spread out and that specific areas do not have an undue burden?
Steve Lakey
Absolutely. The Home Office has agreed with the local authorities a distribution plan that gives definitely not a target but a maximum number per dispersal area. We still have a number of challenges around where the affordable property has traditionally been. London is a classic example. We have a high concentration in east and west London, not much in the middle, not much in the south-west, for example, because traditionally it has been more difficult to source and the properties have been harder to get. Lots of work has been done internally about how we spread that and how we make sure that the east and west does not have such a burden and that it is more centralised. That has happened relatively well. We monitor and we report each month. We send in a spread that shows where the new procurement is, where the hand-back properties are, and how we are managing that area by area. It is still an issue. I cannot say that it is not. It is still challenging. We get offered more properties in the more affordable areas and it is difficult to balance the challenge for us taking that available, usable property in those areas and not getting it elsewhere.
Jo White
What triggers a hand-back of a property?
Steve Lakey
It could be a number of things. Generally speaking, it will be that the landlord has decided they want to do something else with their property and they do not want to have it with us anymore. They will then give us 90 days’ notice, we will then hand them back the property, and then they will do whatever they want.
Jo White
Do you have data on clustering too many close together?
Steve Lakey
Yes.
Jo White
Thinking about community cohesion, what do you do to ensure that the local community is tolerant and understand exactly what is happening in their area?
Steve Lakey
Community cohesion is a challenge, absolutely. We work with the local authorities we are in where that is an issue, and that is a challenge. We will work with their community safety teams quite often. The control generally comes at the sourcing stage. Each local authority will have access to a Clearsprings information portal. That will tell them their local authority spread and the properties that are in the area. Each local authority has the ability to make representation when we first source the property. If we already have three in the street and we are bringing on a fourth, it will be submitted to the local authority team and the local authority can then say, “There is too much concentration”, or, “We are concerned about a particular issue”, or the police may say, “There is a particular issue in that area. We would prefer you not to take that property on.” That will then open up the dialogue and then we might move away from that property and pick one somewhere else.
Jo White
How far in advance of putting people into those properties is that dialogue happening?
Steve Lakey
Most local authorities will have only about a week to make that representation and start the process of having those conversations. Some are better than others. It works better in some areas than others. It is a period of about a week for that issue to be raised. If we cannot reach an agreement, it will get escalated to the Home Office and the Home Office would then arbitrate.
Chair
You have answered Robbie Moore’s question as well. I will bring this section to a conclusion. We will be moving on to the Minister next, but we will finish this. Thank you much for your time today. Examination of witnesses
Witnesses
Alex Norris MP, Becca Jones and Andrew Larter.
Chair
After a short break, we are now back with our second panel. We are grateful to have you here, Minister, and your team. Would you like to introduce yourselves?
Alex Norris
I am Alex Norris. I am a Member of Parliament for Nottingham North and Kimberley, and I am the Minister for Border Security and Asylum at the Home Office.
Becca Jones
Good afternoon. I am Becca Jones. I am the director of asylum support at the Home Office.
Andrew Larter
I am Andrew Larter. I have been the director responsible for delivering alternative forms of asylum accommodation.
Chair
Thank you much. You have sat through the previous session and so you have heard the sorts of themes that the Committee has. We will start the questions with Robbie Moore.
Robbie Moore
Thank you, Chair. Can I just ask simply why the Home Office decided to use Crowborough training camp and Cameron barracks as accommodation for asylum seekers?
Alex Norris
It is the position of the Home Office that we strongly believe that large sites have a role to play in the profound responsibility of accommodating some 97,500 people at the moment, who are by definition vulnerable, and that each space causes a degree of cohesion and impact on local communities. We believe large sites have a role to play for two purposes. One is that you can have safe, legal, decent accommodation for individuals in one place as opposed to hotels. We think they are much better. Secondly, and the thing I did not hear in the previous discussion, which I suspect we may do more of in this, is that goal one in this is to reduce demand. The contracts that that were under discussion were let expecting somewhere in the range of 60,000. That supported population, which is low at the moment, at times has been double that. We are in a situation in this country where we are seeing asylum applications running at treble what they would have run at from 2011 to 2020. We in the Home Office are seriously in the business of reducing those pull factors because, again, applications are down across the EU for the UK. You have seen that in our asylum policy statement, but part of this is about reducing pull factors. We are changing the model. We think that large sites play a role in doing so.
Robbie Moore
Minister, why specifically this location?
Alex Norris
The locations themselves were good. Particularly, as you have seen with Crowborough, both of them have been used in recent memory for Afghan resettlement, and so I would say a similar purpose. Secondly, Crowborough is a training camp that you could walk into. The buildings were there. The bedroom-type accommodation could be easily made there. That is why they were chosen.
Robbie Moore
What is the average number of asylum seekers you can house in hotel accommodation? It is 100, 200, 300 in a normal hotel?
Alex Norris
There is no normal hotel. They range from 100 to 400. You would not have any bigger than 400.
Robbie Moore
Fewer than 400 are being housed at Crowborough. Why is Crowborough considered a large site?
Alex Norris
It is a former military base that has all the services contained on it. That meets our definition of the large site. That is what we call a large site.
Robbie Moore
There is no real difference between the numbers of this so-called large site and a hotel based on numbers of asylum seekers being housed?
Alex Norris
As you have heard, we are on a trajectory for 540. Wethersfield has more than that already with a surge capacity to go much more than that—
Robbie Moore
We are all about Crowborough here.
Alex Norris
As I say, there are not routinely hotels of that size. Again, I have to say that the nature of the provision is different, too, and so it behoves a slightly different categorisation.
Robbie Moore
What criteria does the Home Office use to select these large sites that might be suitable for asylum accommodation? What is specifically attractive about Crowborough beyond what you have said?
Alex Norris
It is the things I have said. It is the ability to operationalise them. It is their size. It is their availability. The MOD offered us Crowborough because it was not using it. Those types of things go into that equation and would do going forwards.
Robbie Moore
Had Crowborough been considered previously for asylum accommodation under previous Governments as a large site programme?
Alex Norris
I can speak only for our Government, but we announced it soon after my arrival at the Home Office and so you can be assured that it is been uppermost in our thoughts.
Robbie Moore
Within the Home Office, you must know surely if previous Administrations had considered Crowborough.
Alex Norris
The advice that is given to previous Ministers has firewalls. We know what announcements were made and perhaps decisions not taken, but I cannot tell you for definite what previous Ministers considered.
Robbie Moore
Okay. In an unpublished letter to the Committee, we understand that a community group, Crowborough Shield, alleged that the Crowborough site had been considered in 2021-22 but rejected by the previous Administration due to the site being considered unsuitable and poor value for money. Would you agree that this site is value for money if this is a site that you have chosen?
Alex Norris
Yes, we believe it is the right thing to do. I appreciate—
Robbie Moore
Do you agree it is value for money?
Alex Norris
Yes. There are clearly significant differences with regards to cost. Value is more than the pound per night. Value is the ability to make the things stand up safely. Value is the impact of the Royal Hotel in Hull. I think of the Cladhan Hotel in Falkirk. I think of the Cresta Court Hotel in Altrincham, near to where I grew up. Those are places where people—in my case, everybody from my town—went to christenings, where you went after weddings for a knees-up, where you went for funerals, school balls, all those things. The impact of taking them out of communities is huge economically but also culturally as well. We think this type of site is a better use of that. I appreciate that sometimes there will be a cost delta there, but the value is good. As I say, there is a real goal in this—take, for example, the fact that last year asylum applications to the UK were down 12%. That is where you get your real cost back; that is where you get your real value back, too, getting it back to more normal levels so that Britain provides shelter in a way that fits our values but at levels that we are used to sustaining.
Robbie Moore
Did the Home Office go through a full stage gate process when deciding whether to progress and use the Crowborough site?
Alex Norris
Yes, taking lessons from the past has been part of our model. We have that stage gate process where sites go into a process, we look at them for possible suitability, we look at all aspects, whether it is planning, what is on the site or any contaminations. We go through quite a lot of that before we get to any point where anything enters the public domain. Then, once into the public domain, you are into site, and that is another series of stages that we go through before, eventually, individuals land on site.
Robbie Moore
Was that process used in the assessment of Crowborough?
Alex Norris
Yes.
Robbie Moore
Finally from me, I know in evidence that was given to the Public Accounts Committee, Home Office officials stated that a significant part of the process in choosing a location was working with local authorities and local communities to ensure a significant level of support. Do you feel that the Home Office worked with local authorities successfully in the choosing of the Crowborough site?
Alex Norris
No, we failed on Crowborough and the failure is mine. I have thought about this. I have had a long time to think about this, Mr Moore. I regret deeply that parliamentary colleagues and council leaders found out through the news rather than from me or senior officials that this was taking place. That should not happen. It did. I have said in the Chamber and I was clear when I answered the urgent question in October that should not have happened. That will not happen for future programmes. Certainly, our parliamentary colleagues will hear from me directly. Certainly, in its initial phases, we did not get this right. I totally accept that. I do not accept what is in the letter from particularly Wealden district council about the process since. It has quite rightly, as has the local community, wanted to know more at every point. They have always been curious. They have always been interesting. Frankly, they have always been courteous and proactive in that approach, appropriately. There just is not always more to tell. The letters contain criticism about our reliance on the public factsheets. I strongly defend that there should be one single version of the truth candidly from the Government to the public. That is what that is. I appreciate that there would be a desire for that to almost update daily. That is not normally the case. Yes, we did not get it right in the initial stages. Since then, we have. I have learned a lot and we have learned a lot. We will do it differently in the case of future sites.
Robbie Moore
The occupation number of Crowborough is currently not at capacity but is around the 400 mark and other hotels that are still in use have occupancy rates of around that same number, if not slightly less. Some may feel that it is simply moving individuals out of a hotel, putting them in a so-called large site that is not any bigger than a previous standard hotel in terms of numbers. Effectively, the Government are doing this to be seen to be moving out of hotels into large sites but not having sites with occupancy rates that are significant in size to reduce the challenges.
Alex Norris
I cannot accept that. If you want, whatever the delta—in this case, it will be up to 540—we can stand outside two or three hotels that are closing. Hotels are now half what they were at their peak under the previous Government. We can ask the public whether they think that is good or bad. It is in and of itself good that hotels are not open and that these are used as an alternative. Also, as I say, when you add on top of that the fact that it reduces that marketing from traffickers saying, “Come to the UK. You will be able to work illegally and be put up in a hotel”, we have to change that reality. We are changing the reality significantly on illegal working and this is changing the reality on accommodation. That alone makes it worthwhile.
Ben Maguire
Thanks, Minister, for coming in. A moment ago, as you might have heard, I asked the MD of Clearsprings about safeguarding issues at Crowborough. You have just said in response to Robbie Moore that we need safe, legal, decent accommodation, which I am sure everyone would agree with. In fact, you are even willing to pay a bit more for large sites like Crowborough versus hotels, given some of the cultural values you mentioned. Chris Murray earlier mentioned a few issues that have arisen at Crowborough that have been reported by lots of different organisations—things like physical hazards on the site, severe damp, failing sewage systems, and even unexploded ordnances and acute asbestos. Is that the extra value that you were talking about before in response to Robbie Moore’s question?
Alex Norris
First of all, Mr Maguire, I did not say that I expect it to be more expensive than hotels. In fact, the experience of Wethersfield is a little less, but our assessment is the same for Wethersfield but also for Crowborough. Those are safe, legal and decent facilities that—
Ben Maguire
You do not recognise any of those descriptions?
Alex Norris
As we stand up sites, we do not always know before we go on to sites and start lifting up things what challenges that may raise, but it has previously been accommodation good enough for Afghan families in recent memory. It has also been good enough accommodation for our armed forces in recent memory. No, I am not concerned there.
Ben Maguire
Minister, when you say “good enough”, does that mean that it is good enough to have severe damp, failing sewage systems and unexploded ordnance, or do you not recognise that?
Alex Norris
I would not recognise that characterisation in those ways. The people on those sites are in safe and legal accommodation.
Ben Maguire
Other reports that we have heard are of re-traumatisation because these people are vulnerable people, some of whom have come from war zones. By definition, asylum seekers have fled conflict. I understand that gunfire is audible from shooting ranges and other training facilities nearby. Is that correct?
Alex Norris
Other facilities are in the area. I totally accept that we have a real duty of care to these people. They are, by definition, the most vulnerable in the country, reliant on the state for bed, board and all their necessities in life. There is a reason—it came up in the previous conversations—why people tend to stay there for short periods of time. That is because of the dormitory-type accommodation that is on site. It is longer at Wethersfield because the rooms are smaller. We are mindful of our health and safety impact. There will be challenges wherever anybody goes. Again, I accept your characterisation of the trauma that many of the people who are supported in this way face. We have to be as careful as possible around mitigating that. Whatever community people are in, there will be different vagaries but I am, as I say, assured and confident that these are good, safe and legal provisions.
Ben Maguire
I am sorry. This is my final point, then. What mitigations are you putting in place for the things that I have mentioned like audible gunfire, like failing sewage systems, like unexploded ordnance, like acute asbestos, like potential physical hazards on site? What mitigations is the Home Office putting in place to make sure that that is not a safety risk?
Alex Norris
I could not be stronger about this and on the point certainly on an exploded ordnance. People on that site are safe from ordnance. I want to be clear on that. Similarly, the wastewater and sewage facilities work as they are supposed to work, and people are not at risk from failing systems. Again, I cannot recognise that challenge. There have been challenges on that site around surface water and drainage, but people are in good conditions there. As I say, these are safe, legal and decent provisions.
Chair
When you did the full stage gate process, what issues were flagged during that process on this site and also on Cameron barracks, which we are interested in?
Alex Norris
If you go right back to the beginning, the initial stage for any site will flag risks around community cohesion. Where are people in relation to that site in Crowborough town, other towns—Uckfield and so on? Those are flagged early in the process and we look at how that can be mitigated. The commitment I have made to local representatives and others is that we want our sites to tread as lightly as possible on communities. We do that process. There is also the process of assessing the condition of the buildings. In many cases, these are long-standing provisions. Wethersfield certainly is one of those. What is the quality of them? Are we able then to use the layout of the building internally so that we could get enough people for it to be a financially viable product? It goes all the way through to our planning approach. Will there be a planning approach that will be successful? Then, once you get through the public engagement piece and the announcement that we are minded to use this for this purpose, when you are on site, you start lifting up through that process. Is there an issue with wastewater, which was one issue flagged with this site? What are the mitigations in place to make sure that that, again, is safe and legal? An important one for Crowborough is entry and exit. How do you get on and off the site safely for individuals, especially at a time when there is a lot of strong views on this topic? Those were the types of issues that were raised through that process, and this is a project that cleared all those hurdles in its way.
Chair
Mitigations have been put in place. Thank you.
Chris Murray
Thank you, Minister. The asylum system that we have in the UK is, clearly, terrible for local communities and terrible for asylum seekers, and I accept you inherited it, but it is also terrible for the taxpayer. The National Audit Office has estimated the 10-year asylum contract to have gone from £4 billion to £15 billion, which is an eyewatering sum of public money. I accept that there may be arguments in favour of large sites. They do not particularly convince me, but I accept that they exist. It does not stack up on cost. We know that large military-style sites have not delivered the expected savings because of capital and set-up costs. The National Audit Office believes that the first generation of large sites is more expensive than using hotels. That is the NAO. Even the Home Office’s own estimates initially thought it would be £94 million cheaper than using hotels. Now it is £46 million more expensive than using hotel accommodation. How do you defend these costing the taxpayer so much?
Alex Norris
I have a couple of points. I defend it first by saying it is not purely a cost calculation here, because the cost calculation says to take contingency accommodation, add in 1,000 for large sites. You take those 22,000 bedspaces, and go around the country, you buy them up in the places in the country that have the lowest property values and you buy them next to each other and you cause a whole boatload of challenges. That is clearly wrong. It also says we have to get the number down. I cannot say this strongly enough. We are running, again, just under six figures for asylum applications in this country. From 2011 to 2020, it would be averaging somewhere at about the 30,000 mark. Those are big changes. We have to change that reality, too. Again, I defend it in that piece. On the initial part of your question, Mr Murray, if you want me to say on the record that these are bad contracts that I would not have let, I will tell you these are bad contracts. There is no news there. If you want me to tell you on the record that we will change these contracts, we will change these contracts. There is no doubt there. I see in this area I have two jobs. The first is to try to get the best out of the contract that we have today, which runs to 2029, albeit we now have a break clause that we can do with a nine-month lead-in. That is job one. Job two is to do something better in its stead. We are doing that work at the moment as a Department.
Chris Murray
Okay, but we know that the Home Office has a poor track record when it comes to large sites. Wethersfield, which we visited—and I accept this was not on your watch but was done by the previous Government—was supposed to cost £5 million and ended up costing £45 million to set up. Scampton went from £5 million to £27 million and then was abandoned. The Bibby Stockholm ended up costing £250 million. Northeye was initially £15 million and then the Home Office poured £20 million into it and then abandoned that project, too. The Department does not have a good track record on large sites, and so why did you reverse your predecessor’s policy of pursuing medium sites to go for large sites? What have you done to your Department to make it able to deliver these in a way it did not under any of your predecessors?
Alex Norris
The one advantage I have on predecessors is that we have inherited in this case over 1,000 lessons learned from those programmes. They were trying to stand those things up for the first time. I have a degree of sympathy, having sat in the chair I have sat in for nine months, about how hard it is. We stand on those shoulders for a start. Secondly, we put new processes in and we talked about the stage process that we go through. Again, that helps us get to the point where the things that we are trying to stand up are real and can work. However, as I say, one important difference is that this is part of our theory of change. This is not just an answer to where to accommodate people. This is part of our theory of change. That is why we believe in it. Medium sites will play a role, too. We have to be a bit cautious there and I am cautious. We all are cautious in the sense of where we are able to do that working with local authorities. Cheltenham is a good example at the moment and Regency Hall. That is a good thing. Certainly old student accommodation by its nature, because of how sites were designed, can be pretty useful for this purpose, but we do have to be careful that we do not just end up recreating hotels in their scale back in central locations and medium sites. There has to be a balance there, and that is the lens that I put it through because these medium sites, once they are built and once they are used, they will be a big part of that. There is a balance, as Ms Mullane said, around the use of office blocks and whether that is the right place. We challenge all that. None of these things are easy or great answers, and the answer will always be a bit of a mix of these things, but that is why large sites have a real part to play in it.
Chris Murray
You will be aware from reading the National Audit Office reports into Home Office failures that one of the problems in the Home Office is everyone says, “We will learn lessons”, and nobody ever does. It does feel like you are slipping back into that pattern again.
Alex Norris
On that point, Mr Murray, judge us by outcomes. I read those reports, too, and I accept the difficult history and I accept the journey, but I would also say we have taken £500 million out of hotel costs. We have taken £1 billion out of the cost of the system generally already. We are on a good journey with contracting things that you and I are both frustrated about. It is not the end state—far from it. What comes next will be different, but that is the impact we have been able to have. I appreciate that you will believe it when you see it.
Chris Murray
When the previous Permanent Secretary came to us several months ago, she told us she had launched a review into management capacity for contracts and that she had recruited 336 full-time staff to work in contracts. What is the outcome of that review and what impact has it had?
Alex Norris
The Department has moved considerably in its capacity for contract management. Again, my evidence for the impact is the savings we have been able to drive out of that. My evidence for the impact of that would be the £74 million in profit sharing and service credits that have been secured through that process. That has been the impact of that. That is a positive step.
Chris Murray
Okay. This is a question we asked Clearsprings, who could not answer it. What is the total cost of Crowborough to the Home Office?
Alex Norris
In what sense? The asylum—
Chris Murray
The whole project.
Alex Norris
Let me get it so that I get it to the pound. For 2024-25, it was a £4 billion programme.
Chris Murray
No, for Crowborough.
Alex Norris
For Crowborough, we have not published that but, in the interests of transparency, we have spent £7.5 million on it so far.
Chris Murray
Is that £7.5 million in the first quarter, four months into a year-long programme?
Alex Norris
Yes, some of those costs are front-loaded, but that is right.
Chris Murray
How much of those were set-up costs and how much are running costs?
Alex Norris
I might turn to Andrew just to help me out there because a lot of it relates to policing and health services.
Andrew Larter
Yes. On Crowborough, we spent £2 million on mobilisation, and the health and police and some additional costs we pay through MOD on some of our hard and soft FM. That takes up to £7.1 million to date.
Chris Murray
Okay. How much is running costs? Sorry, I am just trying to get this clear because I do not want you to say that if it was £7 million in the first four months, we can expect it to be £28 million over the project.
Andrew Larter
The whole life costs will be published in the usual way in the annual accounts, but my understanding is we have paid for around £4 million on running costs through Clearsprings at this point.
Chair
That is £4 million out of the £7 million. There is £7 million in total, and £4 million has gone to Clearsprings.
Alex Norris
Yes.
Chris Murray
Does that mean—I am trying to do a quick calculation in my head—it will be more expensive than hotels per person? It definitely is.
Alex Norris
As figures for the Committee to hold in their heads, looking back at where we were when you published your report in October, we are talking about £144 per bedspace per night in hotels. Wethersfield comes in at £135. I would expect it would be reasonable to say that this will land in a similar place to Wethersfield. As Andrew says, we will publish that in its usual way, but that is my operating assumption as Minister.
Chris Murray
What was the contracting process for tendering it to Clearsprings? Did it go to an open tender?
Alex Norris
No, it would not have been tendered because it was in the geography under which the accommodation contracts are at the moment. It is within Clearsprings’ region.
Andrew Larter
It is a contract change notice in the same way that we did with Wethersfield.
Chris Murray
You did not do any process of establishing a competitive tender process to see if another provider could produce it for less cost?
Alex Norris
No. As I say, we are where we are with the contract. We are on a journey to a new contracting arrangement, but this worked within that process.
Chris Murray
Yes, you have a contract with Clearsprings, but it does not mean that you are barred from looking at alternative types of asylum accommodation. It did not come through that new review of your contract tendering processes and those 400 new staff working on contracting? Nobody suggested, “We should look to see if anyone can do this more cheaply. There might be a better alternative”?
Alex Norris
That was not the decision we took, no.
Chris Murray
Did you have any discussions with local authorities where you said, “We are planning to spend tens of millions of pounds accommodating 500 people? Can a local authority take that amount of money?” Local authorities provide accommodation for a lot less money.
Alex Norris
This is a live conversation at the moment, and you will know that we did open expressions of interest for local authority pilots. I want to be clear with the Committee. I believe that the end state for the next contract and where that gets us to is a much more mixed economy. I am an avowed municipalist. Virtually no aspect of British life I would not turn over to local authorities. My challenge within that is that I think about when I was sat on the other side of the table in my local authority a decade or so ago. We were keen exactly in that space to do more because we know what else is in the area. We have other support services. We would say we could do a better job. Nowadays, that reality is harder for local authorities. Our local authorities and the councillors who lead them have never been under more personal and individual pressure. We are well up for it. We did not, through this process, I have to say, offer in lieu of Crowborough the opportunity to do that, but I would say I have an anxiety. I am anxious in saying that in the provision of bedspaces for 97,500 people. It is the size of the prison estate at the moment. That is the size of the NHS general and acute beds, just for context. I would love local authorities to step up and say, “We could provide significant chunks of those in our community.” I am anxious that that will not be forthcoming, but I have talked to the LGA. It does a great job in this space. We have talked to individual local authorities, too. I want much more municipal involvement, but that is part of the process we are going through at the moment.
Chris Murray
I want to ask one final question, picking up on your answer to Robbie Moore earlier. You said that one benefit of large sites is essentially community cohesion, even if it is not cost. It is not the hotel in the city centre that everyone recognises. First, you have just said it is a 97,500-person estate, we are talking about. This is 500 people. It is a drop in the ocean compared to the scale you would need to maybe land that argument. Also, given the attention that a large site draws—you have had urgent questions about it and “Panorama” specials about it, we are holding a special Committee event about one site of 500 people—are you sure that you do not draw attention to the problems that that is creating rather than solving the social cohesion issues because, fundamentally, the system has no fewer asylum seekers?
Alex Norris
No. As I say, this is part of our theory of change on reducing demand. We are doing lots of other things in this space and you will see lots more to come. We have made improvements on other aspects with quicker and better decision making, removing more people with no right to be here. That all takes pressure off, too. However, these sites have some advantages. They have a perimeter, for example, in a way that, a hotel opposite a train station in Hull does not. There are some security advantages in that regard. It is our view, taking all those factors into account, that this has a place for it. That is why we have, as you say, 540 in this case at this site, but also more at Wethersfield with a surge capacity of up to 1,200. Our aspiration for Cameron barracks is for 300 more. I would like to bring more and I intend to bring more forwards in this programme. If you add them up, that makes an impact. As I say, they are better sites than hotels. I appreciate others may take other views, but this is mine.
Margaret Mullane
Thank you, Minister. How long will you be using Crowborough as asylum accommodation?
Alex Norris
The commitment, as you heard in the previous session, is for a year. That is how long the MOD has given it to us.
Margaret Mullane
Is that a concrete year and then you will go, and so it is definite?
Alex Norris
I have no announcement for the Committee otherwise. There are realities. Wethersfield has an SDO that runs into April 2027. We have this that takes us pretty much to the end of this year, as in the case of Napier barracks. That was available for a while and then it was not and we used it and then we returned it. The basis on which it has been given to us is the basis on which we are working.
Margaret Mullane
Why did the Home Office update its factsheet about Crowborough training camp to remove a statement to say they will come back after 12 months? You have identified a year to me. A factsheet said that and then the Department pulled it. That does not feel transparent.
Alex Norris
This slightly speaks to the point I was trying to make earlier. I know there is so much interest in this that any change of any word or dot and comma is read into, and that is perfectly reasonable. I would say for the Committee as I have said in the Chamber before that the basis on which it is been given to us is the basis on which we are working. Were there to be any change to that, local representatives would hear from us and the Home Secretary and I would make a statement or whatever was considered necessary for parliamentary transparency. I do not have that for the Committee.
Margaret Mullane
Would you say then that whoever pulled that factsheet did that off their own initiative, or do you feel that was more about what the Home Office was like at that point?