Member

As well as the processing of claims and the investigation each claim needs—the administrative overheads, the appeal system, dealing with or otherwise deporting those whose appeal fails and the additional headache of trying to get home countries to take them back—there are other costs, including, for instance, those incurred in asylum support for housing. The escalation of numbers has meant that the Government have not been able to close asylum hotels as they intended. There are just too many asylum seekers to be housed, while other accommodation such as rented flats and houses, some in multiple occupancy, is also overstretched. Local councils and police forces have their work cut out for them— on straitened finances, as we now know to our cost—in meeting the demands of an influx of asylum seekers dispersed across the country as a result of government policy. Many of them are made up of entrants who were formerly on student visas and who then claim asylum.