The government spent nearly a third less on hotels to house asylum seekers between April 2024 and March 2025, reports the BBC.

The Home Office’s annual accounts show £2.1bn was spent on hotel accommodation – an average of about £5.77m per day, down from £3bn or £8.3m per day, the previous year. Data obtained by BBC Verify shows the saving has been driven by a reduction in the average nightly cost per person housed, after a government move to use cheaper forms of accommodation and room sharing.

But Dr Peter Walsh, from the Migration Observatory think tank at Oxford University, warned that the surge in small boat crossings seen since March could lead to a renewed reliance on hotels. “I don’t think hotels are going away anytime soon based on current trends,” he said. Hotel accommodation is used when there is no other housing available for asylum seekers, and the government has committed to stop using asylum hotels by the end of this Parliament. There were 32,345 people in asylum hotels at the end of March 2025, up from 29,585 people at the end of June last year, but lower than the total in December.

A senior Home Office source said one of the main factors behind the saving was moving some asylum seekers from hotels into other types of cheaper accommodation. They said the department had prioritised moving families and children into regular housing so they were not living in hotels for long periods of time.

BBC News understands the majority of people moved out of hotels are now living in local housing, or houses in multiple occupation (HMOs), a type of rented accommodation where at least three individuals share the use of a bathroom and kitchen. Most of these properties have been acquired through the government’s contracts with Serco, one of the three companies responsible for asylum accommodation. Some savings have also been made by renegotiating elements of those contracts, which were originally signed by the previous Conservative government.

Officials have previously told MPs that greater room-sharing in hotels has helped reduce the number of sites and per head costs over the past financial year. It is not clear how many people usually share a room, but Home Office minister Angela Eagle has previously said “people can double up or treble up” if rooms are big enough.

The Home Office accounts suggest 273 hotels were in use in March 2024 but that number has now fallen by 71. The average nightly cost per person fell from £162.16 in March 2023 to £118.87 by March 2025, according to BBC Verify’s analysis of official data obtained through a Freedom of Information request. The Home Office’s accounts also show that almost £50m of public money was effectively written off after the Labour government scrapped a Conservative plan to use the RAF Scampton site in Lincolnshire to house asylum seekers. Tens of millions had already been spent on the site when Labour came to power and axed the plans.

The Home office annual report says that decision resulted in a “constructive loss of £48.5m”, but a department source said the site would have been an even more expensive option than hotels, even taking into account the loss incurred. The report also confirmed that £270m paid to Rwanda to help support the country’s economic development was not refunded after the UK government scrapped the Rwanda scheme.

Conservative ministers had planned to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda to deter people from crossing the Channel in small boats. However, the scheme was stalled by legal challenges and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has said it led to just four people being removed to the country voluntarily. The Rwandan government said last year that it was “under no obligation” to pay back the £270m after Labour scrapped the deal.

MP says police force’s response ‘disappointing’ and reasoning ‘raises serious questions’, reports the Big Issue.

Greater Manchester Police (GMP) says it refuses to give its officers the choice to carry naloxone – a drug which can reverse opioid overdoses – because of objections over whether it has really saved lives and a belief officers would not need to use it, while slamming a push to “press naloxone onto UK forces”. Naloxone is a drug, often carried as a nasal spray, which can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose. GMP is one of just two forces, along with Suffolk Constabulary, where a decision has been taken not to allow police officers or staff to carry naloxone, according to a recent Home Office study – though GMP claims “it is not quite the case we are an outlier”.

As drug deaths reach record levels and synthetic opioids claim lives, Big Issue has been reporting on GMP’s refusal to roll out the drug.

The force had remained tight-lipped about why, explaining it is a “complex” decision. But a letter, seen by Big Issue, has revealed the real reasoning behind the refusal. It claims officers in areas of Greater Manchester with high drug use said “there has not been a single occasion where they would have reached for naloxone had it been available to them”, and that “we believe some UK forces who have trialled naloxone have seen no use of the product during the timeframe”.

Tom Morrison, the Liberal Democrat MP for Cheadle, said that he was “disappointed” that GMP continues to resist offering naloxone to officers on the front line. “The reality is that police officers often arrive at the scene of an overdose before paramedics, and withholding a safe, legal, lifesaving tool in that context raises serious questions”, he said. Morrison called for a well-managed trial to get evidence specific to Manchester, and said other forces had not found the barriers cited by GMP to be insurmountable. After it emerged a trial of naloxone by GMP, promised last year, was cancelled, Morrison said the force had created an expectation it “would be part of the solution to rising opioid harms”. He added: “The current refusal to even trial naloxone on the front line appears at odds with those public commitments.”

Kate Green, the deputy mayor of Greater Manchester, said she “encourages the force to allow its officers to carry naloxone”, continues to keep the matter under “close review”, and remains “in dialogue with the chief constable about it”. Naloxone has been branded a “miracle cure”, waking somebody up from a potentially fatal overdose, and has been credited with cutting opioid deaths by 14% in US states where it has been rolled out. Paramedics in the UK administer thousands of doses of naloxone every month, but as opioid deaths rise the government has led a push to equip frontline police officers with the drug. The details were revealed in a letter from Lee Rawlinson, the force’s chief resources officer, responding to Morrison after he raised the issue on the back of Big Issue reporting.

“We feel our response is entirely proportionate at this time,” Rawlinson wrote. The force argued naloxone would not be an effective weapon against the danger of synthetic opioids such as nitazines, saying GMP’s medical adviser had advised “the level of naloxone required in synthetic opioid cases is likely a much greater dose than officers would carry and the patient would require ongoing careful monitoring by a doctor”. Instead, the letter said that “good basic life support”, delivered with a pocket mask, bag vale mask or face shield, would keep an overdose patient alive without naloxone until ambulance crews arrived. It also said the force had evidence from a team dealing “primarily in target areas of high drug use”, who said in the last year “there has not been a single occasion where they would have reached for naloxone had it been available to them”.

Some 32 forces carry naloxone – meaning some police officers or staff are carrying naloxone, either full time or as a trial. A further seven have committed to rolling out naloxone, while a further five have agreed to implement it or agreed to a pilot. It is just Greater Manchester, along with Suffolk, listed by the Home Office as forces where a decision has been taken not to allow police officers or staff to carry naloxone. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the decision whether to carry naloxone is up to an officer. Both GMP and Suffolk make naloxone available in custody – though GMP say this is administered by healthcare professionals rather than police officers.

“We believe some UK forces who have trialled naloxone have seen no use of the product during the timeframe,” GMP’s letter said, citing a difficulty in clarifying whether naloxone had actually saved lives when used by police. “A number of factors may have contributed to the ‘positive’ result and therefore we believe the data is statistically subjective and not clinical based,” Rawlinson wrote. Between June 2019 and December 2024, police officers used naloxone 1,232 times. South Wales Police said its officers had used it 134 times in situations they deemed life-threatening. Morrison said GMP’s justification “risks overlooking the unpredictable nature of overdoses, including synthetic opioids like nitazenes, which can act quickly and require an immediate response”, and that any response which stabilised a patient “could make the difference between life and death”.

More than 1,100 people are currently living in B&Bs and hotels across the city with nowhere permanent to call home, reports the Liverpool Echo.

Houses of multiple occupation (HMOs) could be used by Liverpool Council to address its continuing homelessness crisis. With an “unprecedented demand” on housing services across the city, the local authority is reviewing its approach to rough sleeping and homelessness. Liverpool’s trend of rough sleeping ticked upward throughout 2024 when compared to the same period 12 months earlier. The average number of people seen each night rough sleeping between April and September 2024 was 30, an increase on the average of 22 people seen per night over the same period in 2023.

New figures released by the city council have revealed how in one month along this year, 166 people were seen by the Liverpool Assertive Outreach and Response Service “engaging in a street lifestyle.” A report to go to cabinet on the new homelessness strategy said the number of rough sleepers has increased again, which could link to the warmer weather.  When the strategy was first unveiled last year, the local authority said it wanted to make homelessness brief, rare and non-recurring. Its night assessment hub has continued to be a vital tool in helping people off the streets.

Throughout winter, in partnership with the Whitechapel Centre, Liverpool Council provides a temporary centre for those seeking accommodation. Each year in preparation for winter, the local authority works with partners to ensure there are a range of additional solutions in place during the worst of the winter, including ‘sit-up’ spaces and block-booked hotel rooms.

The scheme, which operates from 8pm to 8am for 30 people, was extended throughout the summer to the end of this month to allow the council “to find solutions for people in an off-the-street setting.” The city said during April, its Always Help Available phone received 2,664 inbound phone calls – a similar number to the previous month.

Issues also remain around those in temporary accommodation. As of June 1, there are 1,635 households in temporary accommodation, with around 1,100 in B&B/hotels, and limited permanent move-on options available at present.

The document said: “There has been unprecedented demand on the council’s housing solutions service in recent years and an increase in homeless presentations, with the service receiving an increase in requests for help and assistance from those at risk of homelessness. This is due, in part, to an increase in no fault evictions, family and friends no longer being able to accommodate and affordability concerns as rents increase.”

In a bid to release pressure on the service, Liverpool Council is to use a range of temporary accommodation services including the use of Houses of Multiple Occupancy (HMO’s), studio flats and a range of properties to meet the bedroom needs of homeless households, which will be dispersed across the city ensuring offers that are made are suitable having regard to the suitability requirements set out in legislation and statutory guidance. Documents which the cabinet will be asked to endorse said it will not hold any leases, tenancies or licences of the properties, rather procure a service providing a minimum number of properties with all property and tenancy related functions delivered by the provider with the opportunity to bring more properties on board as required.

Amnesty warns DWP’s use of AI and automation in welfare is harming disabled people and digitally excluded claimants, reports the Big Issue.

Disabled people, the homeless, low-income families and those with limited digital access are being “trapped in bureaucratic limbo” by the UK government’s “unhealthy obsession” with artificial intelligence (AI), a new report has warned. Amnesty International’s report, Too Much Technology, Not Enough Empathy, accuses the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) of rolling out flawed and experimental technology systems that are harming some of the country’s most vulnerable people.

The report found that digital-only systems for applying for benefits, including personal independence payment (PIP) and universal credit, are inaccessible for many, particularly those with disabilities, long-term health conditions or digital illiteracy. One claimant, interviewed as part of the report, told Amnesty: “Have some form of compassion, you know, make the forms and things easier. I mean, I’m quite illiterate. I mean, a lot of women are, men of my age, can’t use them… So they’re stuffed. They send me letters on my phone. I can’t open them. So, I ring up. I can’t open it. I haven’t got an iPad. I can’t afford an iPad.”

Rather than easing access to much-needed support, Amnesty said that DWP’s growing use of automation and AI is contributing to distress and discrimination amongst claimants. The systems in question include automated eligibility checks, risk profiling algorithms that flag claimants for fraud investigations, and data-matching tools that verify personal details using other government databases. In terms of automated data checks, such as checking income with HMRC or immigration status with the Home Office, Amnesty noted there is often “very little, if any, human oversight” making it difficult for claimants to challenge errors or understand how decisions are made.

Imogen Richmond-Bishop, Amnesty’s researcher on technology and economic, social and cultural rights, said the DWP’s approach has “reduced people to data points where the success of a claim often depends more on fitting into rigid digital categories than actual eligibility”. She added that “technology in this instance has oversimplified people’s complex realities by creating narrow and opaque processing that demeans people’s needs, especially when they are unable to get the support from a human case worker that they need”.

The report describes a system that is inaccessible by design, with digital-only platforms and long wait times on phone helplines, leaving many unable to get the support they are entitled to. More than half (52%) of claimants surveyed reported difficulty accessing social security support, and welfare advisors said the system is increasingly hard to navigate, with 64% saying it was difficult or very difficult to get information about universal credit. Amnesty also warns that many claimants face digital exclusion. A person’s ability to access online systems can change depending on their income, health, language skills, housing or education. For many, these barriers are overlapping and long-term.

Richmond-Bishop said this reality is being ignored in favour of a data-led approach. “While people struggle to make ends meet and put food on the table due to inadequate social security, the DWP is still spending millions of pounds on costly, experimental systems designed to profile and surveil claimants.” the Amnesty researcher said. Amnesty also raises concerns about how much sensitive information claimants are forced to hand over. This includes data about their health, disability, housing, marital status and bank accounts. The human rights group describes this as “alarmingly invasive and deeply opaque”. “This excessive data harvesting calls into question the proportionality, legality and fairness of how information is collected, processed and potentially exploited,” said Richmond-Bishop.

The report warns of “relentless dehumanisation” and a growing atmosphere of surveillance, rather than support. Many claimants are being asked to navigate complex systems without sufficient assistance, and even small mistakes, such as a missed update or unclear message, can lead to missed payments or sanctions. Amnesty is calling for a full, independent review of the digital systems used by the DWP, and for any systems that violate human rights to be scrapped. It also wants the UK government to commit to ensuring all AI systems are transparent, explainable and never mandatory.

Crucially, the group is demanding that non-digital options for benefit applications and case management must be fully available, accessible and equal in quality, so that no one is left behind due to poverty, disability or digital illiteracy. “The DWP’s mission to reduce costs has become an unhealthy obsession,” said Richmond-Bishop. “Urgent questions remain: is the tech rollout truly cost-effective, or simply cutting corners at the expense of vulnerable people?”

The DWP has been contacted for comment.

People sleeping on the streets are at high-risk during periods of hot weather, and there can be severe impacts on their health and wellbeing, reports Shelter.

Rough sleepers can find it difficult to cool down. They might sleep on hot tarmac or in direct sun, with little access to water or shelter. Without safe storage for belongings, they might need to wear all their clothes: winter coats, many layers, heavy shoes. People sleeping on the streets might have health conditions or addictions. Alcohol and some drugs are dehydrating. These vulnerabilities can mean that they are less able to move out of direct sunlight and seek help. The health effects of heat can be severe and life threatening. Heat exhaustion happens when a person overheats. Symptoms include heavy sweating, dizziness, and feeling faint.

If a person doesn’t cool down and hydrate they can develop heatstroke. Heatstroke is a life threatening condition and anyone showing symptoms needs emergency medical help. Signs of heatstroke include seizures, confusion, and loss of consciousness. When a rough sleeper collapses from heat exhaustion or heatstroke they might be mistaken for being asleep or drunk. Outreach staff and others should understand the symptoms of heat-related illnesses and know to take quick action.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) provides a heat-health alert service from 1 June to 15 September, in partnership with the Met Office. It is aimed at health and social care professionals and anyone with a role in reducing the harm extended periods of hot weather can have on health. This includes the health effects on rough sleepers. The system is impact-based and provides information over and above the fact that hot weather is likely to occur. For example, how an NHS strike during a predicted heatwave could worsen health impacts.

The Met Office monitors forecasts and assesses potential impacts of high temperatures. Where an alert is needed, the Met Office releases one at a level based on suspected impacts. The alert levels are:

• yellow – impacts are expected for the most vulnerable, including rough sleepers
• amber – impacts are expected across the population
• red – a significant risk to life even for healthy people

The heat-health alert system dashboard is available online. It’s important that professionals are up to date with changes to the alert level so they can respond quickly.

Government guidance includes information about how to prepare for hot weather and take action to support rough sleepers. The guidance is for professionals responsible for people sleeping rough, including local authorities, and organisations providing street-based support. Local authorities and other organisations should consider developing or improving their local heat severe weather plans and risk assessment strategies. They could identify cool spaces and plan to make emergency accommodation suitable during hot weather. Authorities could build relationships and trust with people sleeping rough.

Permanent facilities might be more likely to be used compared with emergency pop-up facilities. For example, rough sleepers might be more likely to use a familiar day centre with air conditioning and extra fans. A cool space might include access to water and food. When there are heat alerts, local authorities and organisations could work together to provide rough sleepers with:

• food and cool water
• shade, appropriate clothes and sunscreen
• effective information and resources
• access to cool spaces, including outdoor areas

Action could be taken in a staged process as the alert levels rise. This contrasts with a cold weather response, where it is common for action to be taken only when the temperature falls below freezing. A staged approach might include:

• extra outreach to check on rough sleepers during a yellow heat-health alert
• providing cool spaces and accommodation during an amber heat-health alert

Every local authority should have a severe weather emergency protocol (SWEP) to help people sleeping on the streets. Severe weather includes heatwaves. Local authorities are encouraged to follow the Met Office’s UK weather warnings and heat-health alerts. SWEP support might include temporary accommodation in a hostel or night shelter. People should not have to meet immigration, residence or priority need conditions to access support. People who are homeless can apply for help from any local authority.

A local authority has a duty to provide interim accommodation if it has reason to believe the person might be homeless, eligible for assistance, and in priority need. A person can have a priority need if they are vulnerable, for example because of a physical or mental health condition. A person’s circumstances can be relevant. For example, a rough sleeper might be more vulnerable during a heatwave.

In 2023, the Museum of Homelessness published a report into Severe Weather Emergency responses by local authorities. The investigation found that, between 2020 to 2022, of 91 councils:

• only 53% put in measures to respond to extreme heat
• more than 25% did not activate SWEP at all or could not provide details on what steps they had taken during extreme weather
• none had measures in place for other weather events such as extreme rain or flash flooding.