Alleviating homelessness and destitution for people with no recourse to public funds is costly and long-term
Through social care services, councils provide essential ‘safety-net’ support to safeguard the welfare of families, adults with care needs and young people leaving care who have no recourse to public funds and are at risk of homelessness or who do not have sufficient income to meet their basic living and/or housing needs.
Based on the number of households supported at the end of March 2024, the annual cost to 85 councils in England and Scotland was £82 million - a cost that is usually met through over-stretched social care budgets.
Councils are not directly funded by central government to provide accommodation and financial support to households with no recourse to public funds when statutory social care duties are engaged, despite support often being provided for lengthy periods whilst people are waiting for an outcome on their immigration claim, which for the majority will be a grant of leave to remain:
- In 2023-24, support ended for 70% of families and 59% of adults with care needs following a grant of leave to remain)
- The average time on support was 1.5 years for families and 2.5 years for adults with care needs
- The proportion of households being provided with accommodation and financial support that had been receiving this for at least 1000 days increased from 17% to 19% for families and 28% to 32% for adults with care needs
Although working with the Home Office to expedite immigration outcomes can achieve positive results, the proportion of households supported on a long-term basis has increased across the year. Councils are also experiencing pressures arising from problems in the asylum support system. Transfers from local authority support to Home Office asylum support, are taking far too long, with families and adults following this exit pathway receiving support from their council for an average period of 280 days and 414 days, respectively.
In order to significantly reduce the costs for local government when households are supported on a long-term basis and to provide better outcomes for households receiving support, the Home Office needs to implement urgent policy and procedural changes, including ensuring that the NRPF team remains fully resourced to undertake a case-by-case approach to resolving long-standing cases while policy solutions are lacking.
Need for a more strategic response at national and local level
In May 2022, the independent review of children's social care in England noted that the government must also explicitly recognise several contextual factors, including immigration restrictions that lead to families requiring section 17 support, and understand how they drive the need (and therefore the cost) for children’s social care up or down and have a wider plan to address them.
The homelessness response provided by social care services is an essential component in ending rough sleeping, reducing child poverty, reducing hospital discharge timescales, and tackling modern slavery and violence and women against girls. With social care services experiencing significant pressures, councils would be better placed to fulfil their commitments to local and national strategies, and to assist multi-agency efforts to address such challenges, if they are properly funded to provide support to households with no recourse to public funds when statutory social care duties are engaged. In the absence of full funding, government must consider providing a grant in order to enable councils to develop their service and support for people with no recourse to public funds. Such a grant could be used to fund a specialist worker or commission immigration advice.
