The Home Office will temporarily give new refugees more time to move on from asylum accommodation, in a move it is hoped will reduce pressure on councils’ homelessness services.
The move-on period will be extended from 28 to 56 days in a pilot scheme that will initially run until June, when officials will assess whether it should continue.
A Home Office spokesperson said: ‘We have inherited enormous pressures in the asylum system and remain absolutely committed to ending the use of hotels as we ramp up returns of failed asylum seekers.’
Homeless Link said giving new refugees just 28 days to find a home meant the Government had previously ‘simply accepted homelessness as part of the asylum system’.
The charity described the pilot as ‘a really welcome step’, for which it had been campaigning, but said it would like to see the change made permanent.
Homeless Link's director of social change, Fiona Colley, said: ‘Giving newly recognised refugees more time to find housing and start building their lives outside of the asylum system will be so important in helping prevent homeless for so many people, greatly reducing the risk of refugees becoming homeless and taking pressure off already overstretched local authority and voluntary and community sector homelessness services.’
