Lone child asylum seekers placed in Home Office child hotels were at increased risk of trafficking and exploitation, a report has found.
Home Office child hotels were introduced in July 2021 and decommissioned in January 2024 after the High Court deemed their regular operation – rather than acting as emergency accommodation – unlawful.
During their operation, 440 children went missing – some as young as 12 – among the 5,400 accommodated between July 2021 and June 2023, and 118 have still not been found, according to the latest statistics which were published in March.
A report by UCL researchers and charity ECPAT UK investigated the risks of trafficking and exploitation among children seeking asylum in the UK by interviewing the young people as well as professionals involved in their care, such as social workers, policy stakeholders, academics, lawyers, law enforcement, support workers and NGO staff.
Of the 21 young people and professionals interviewed for the report, 19 agreed that children placed in hotels were at higher risk of trafficking and exploitation compared to those staying in other accommodation.
The hotels were described by children as feeling like a “jail”, with some children left in them for several months despite the Home Office commitment to only use them for emergency purposes and never for longer than two weeks. One young girl said her friends’ experiences in the hotels were “too difficult for them and for their mental health”.
The researchers said the professionals interviewed “felt it obvious that if vulnerable children with potential trafficking ties are crammed into a publicly announced, easily identifiable hotel upon arrival in the UK, it provides an easy target for traffickers seeking to find and exploit these children”. They said semi-independent accommodation was likely to pose less of a risk than the hotels, with foster care offering the lowest risk.
The report also found that the Home Office’s introduction of safety protocols to address the issue of children going missing had made things worse. A hotel staff member explained to the researchers that one of these protocols involved staff members knocking on the doors of children, in particular those from nationalities deemed at risk of going missing, every hour throughout the night to check they were still in their room.
The hotel worker said these practices and the poor condition of the hotels meant most children could not cope for more than a week before leaving and never returning.
The researchers also found that the now-repealed Rwanda scheme “created dangerous incentives for young people to disappear once in the UK and reduced oversight and powers to intervene within hotel contexts”.
“In this way, new ‘hostile’ policies are seen to make an already vulnerablised population even more at risk of harms in the UK,” the authors said.
The hotels were closed following a High Court ruling in a case brought by ECPAT UK, which is a children’s rights organisation that campaigns to ensure children can enjoy their rights to be protected and to live free from trafficking and exploitation.
Patricia Durr, chief executive at ECPAT UK, said the charity “warned authorities from day one” about the risk the hotels posed to unaccompanied children.
“Despite these warnings, the practice continued for years and ended only when our small organisation took both the Home Office and Kent County Council to court, with the practice deemed unlawful,” she said.
“This research confirms our fears and emphasises the need for urgent action to find the missing children and a statutory independent inquiry to ensure this child protection scandal never happens again.”
The report calls for an inquiry into the disappearance of children from Home Office hotels and an extensive plan of how to find and support those children and young adults who remain missing.
Durr said the inquiry is needed “to ensure this child protection scandal never happens again”.
Dr Sonja Ayeb-Karlsson, the lead author of the study, said: “This is a national scandal which must not be repeated. It is still not clear if the children who disappeared have been found, nor what attempts have been made to find those who remain missing and make sure that they are safe.”
The report also asks the government to ensure that local authorities children’s services have sufficient funding to provide quality care and support to unaccompanied children seeking asylum.
Other recommendations include:
- The Home Office should repeal the powers in the Illegal Migration Act which allow for the department to directly provide accommodation for unaccompanied children.
- The Home Office and the Department for Education should develop a strategy that ensures that appropriate safeguarding measures are used in the accommodation of children and young people identified as being at risk of trafficking.
- DfE must ensure unaccompanied children have prompt access to education and mental health support
Commenting on the report, Eleanor Lyons, the government’s independent anti-slavery commissioner, said: “This research rightly calls for more to be done now to make sure that we are protecting children from exploitation, ensuring children’s services can wrap-care around children in need, and make sure that all children are in safe accommodation.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “The allegations in this report are very serious. Unaccompanied children in the asylum system can be extremely vulnerable and their welfare and safety should be a central concern. We will consider these findings carefully.
“A new government is determined to restore order to the asylum system so that it operates swiftly, firmly, and fairly; and ensures the rules are properly enforced."