The Home Office has introduced “changed structures and processes” to tighten up the procurement of future sites for housing asylum seekers in a bid to end its previous “dysfunctional” culture, MPs have been told.
A just-published letter from former permanent secretary Sir Matthew Rycroft to members of parliament’s Public Accounts Committee sets out measures the department is taking to cut down on poor decisions that have cost the public purse tens of millions of pounds.
Rycroft’s letter responds to the PAC’s February report on the now-abandoned plans to create accommodation for around 1,400 asylum seekers at the former HMP Northeye in Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex.
However it also follows other recent failures in relation to asylum-seeker accommodation – including £34m spent on the disused Bibby Stockholm barge, which housed far fewer asylum seekers than expected; £60m on the RAF Scampton site, which was abandoned before it could open; and £2.9m on a cancelled site in Linton-on-Ouse.
At an evidence session in December, Rycroft told PAC members that ministers in the last government had pushed officials to progress rapidly with the acquisition of Northeye and the other sites, forcing the department to “think laterally and act quickly”.
He said civil servants had “rushed into action” in relation to Northeye, but that “with the benefit of hindsight” the department “should have done more on the assurance side".
The Home Office spent £15.4m acquiring Northeye in 2023. The figure was more than double the amount that vendors Brockwell Group had paid for the site a few months earlier. It subsequently emerged that the former prison site required around £20m worth of remediation work before it could be used for its intended purpose.
A preliminary report had pointed to the potential for such an outcome, but a full investigation of the level of contamination and the feasibility of fixing it had not been completed before the Home Office entered into a contract to purchase the site.
In their February report on Northeye, PAC members said there appeared to be a “dysfunctional culture” at the Home Office in which value for money is “a secondary concern”.
In his update to PAC members, which was dated 20 March but only published yesterday, Rycroft – who has now left his post at the Home Office – said “changed structures and processes” had now been introduced at the Home Office.
“Future sites now follow a detailed ‘stage gate’ process based on identified lessons,” he said. “This recently refreshed process ensures proper due diligence and decision-making before investment decisions.
“Due diligence includes conducting desktop sifts and ‘Red Book’ valuations in earlier stages, completing equality and environmental impact assessments, and preparing operational management plans in later stages and ahead of contract exchanges.”
Rycroft told MPs that the “stage gates” being used aligned with the framework created by the Royal Institute of British Architects, “incorporating wider knowledge and lessons from the property sector”.
He said that all sites progressed in the Asylum Accommodation Programme were required to follow the stage gates “to avoid repeating past mistakes experienced with sites such as Northeye”.
Rycroft added: “This updated structure and approach provide more detailed and transparent evidence which is improving our decision-making on value for money and feasibility.”
At the PAC’s December hearing, Rycroft told MPs that a review of the Asylum Accommodation Programme had identified “more than 1,000 lessons” from recent property deals.
His 20 March letter said those lessons had been categorised into 25 themes, including litigation, planning, communication with local partners, policy decisions, and site operations.
“Specific lessons include making earlier decisions on routes to obtain planning permission, choosing appropriate locations for sites, commissioning site surveys early to inform detailed planning, and shifting to smaller or medium-sized sites that are easier to manage operationally and minimise the impact on the local authority," he said.
Rycroft added that the Asylum Accommodation Programme had also “updated its scope and bedspace targets to be more deliverable and realistic”.
Ministry of Justice permanent secretary Dame Antonia Romeo is due to succeed Rycroft as Home Office perm sec later this month. Home Office second permanent secretary Simon Ridley has been appointed as the acting permanent secretary until 14 April, when Romeo will take up the role.