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 2023, the annual cost to 81 councils in England and Scotland was £77.6 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 (on average 1.5 years for families and 2.5 years for adults) whilst people are waiting for an outcome on their immigration claim, which for the majority (77% families and 64% adults exiting support) will be a grant of leave to remain.
Although working with the Home Office to expedite immigration outcomes achieves positive results, with more families exiting support in 2022-2023 than were taken on for support, the proportion of households supported on a long-term basis remains too high.
At the end of March 2023, 17% of families and 28% of adults with care needs who were provided with accommodation and financial support had been receiving support for at least 1000 days.
Since the beginning of 2023, the Home Office NRPF team has undertaken a review of long-standing cases that has resulted in more than 500 outstanding immigration claims being resolved, but a case-by-case approach can only achieve so much. In order to significantly the number of long-standing cases and associated costs for local government when households are supported on a long-term basis and face difficulties accessing immigration advice, additional policy and procedural changes are required.
Additionally, transfers from local authority support to Home Office asylum support, when this is appropriate, are taking far too long, with families and adults following this exit pathway receiving support from their council for an average period of 353 days and 414 days, respectively.
The government needs to make policy and procedural changes to ensure that support provided to people with no recourse to public funds when statutory social care duties are engaged is, in the majority of cases, a short-term intervention.
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.
