A new Report from Refugee Action, Hostile Accommodation: How the Asylum Housing System is Cruel by Design, shows the government is already running a system of de facto detention and segregation of people in the current asylum accommodation system – even before the passage of its new anti-migrant bill.

The Report has already received some attention from today’s Guardian, under the headline “UK asylum seekers who complain about conditions ‘threatened with Rwanda’”. The newspaper also says that asylum seekers were also told that if they complained about the quality of food served to them the police would be called.

Three-quarters of those interviewed in the research highlighted the low quality and inappropriate nature of the food provided. 90% reported that the accommodation was unsuitable for children and 61% reported safe-guarding issues regarding their children. “71% of our survey respondents reported a deterioration in their mental health.”

The Report is based on 100 in-depth interviews with asylum seekers in hotels in London, Manchester, West Midlands and Bradford. It includes interviews with single adults and families, detailed casework records relating to problems in hotels and other asylum accommodation, and freedom of information requests to council environmental health departments.

The Report’s Executive Summary says: “Nearly 50,000 people seeking asylum currently live in temporary or ‘contingency’ accommodation in hotels where they are held indefinitely in conditions that actively harm their physical and mental health. Their freedom of movement and basic liberties are restricted, they are held in rooms where they are unable to receive guests or arrange childcare and they are told that if they leave for short periods, such as one or two days, they will not be able to return. They live in an environment of fear of attacks by racist groups stoked by the racist language of politicians and sections of the media.

“This is a system of ‘de-facto detention’ which shares some of the features of other forms of detention in which people are detained indefinitely, segregated from communities, do not have access to legal or welfare services and have limited contact with the outside world due to restrictions and the cost of transport and communications.”

The Report argues that current arrangements constitute “a nation-wide system of racialised segregation and de-facto detention of people seeking asylum.” It points out that the cost of de facto detention has increased exponentially since 2019 – there are now over 100,000 people in asylum accommodation – leading to enormous profits being generated for private contractors.

Some family groups have lived in one room for over a year, often in room s without locks on the door. Children are sometimes too afraid to sleep. Pest and rodent infestations, mould, and flooding are frequent problems. Overcrowding is rife. Children are often unable to attend school and people in chronic pain cannot access a GP. With an arbitrary and traumatic dispersal system, mental health issues are widespread.

The UK now has one of the largest detention estates in Europe and is the only country to use detention without time limit, the Report notes. Brown and black people especially are being held for months and years in segregated spaces, cut off from communities, in buildings that are called ‘hotels’ but are in reality de facto detention.

“Staff enact penalties which are arbitrary and not governed by any formal process,” says the Report. “People have been subject to unannounced random room searches. One person experienced the housing provider coming in, without permission, and going through her room. Her belongings were then confiscated, including her insulin which could have had life threating consequences. She was not allowed to go back into her room and was homeless for the following week.”

The Report recommends housing people seeking asylum in high quality and appropriate accommodation, whose standards should be brought into line with those of the rest of the population  and adjusted for their specific needs.

The full Report is available here.