New BID report on bail address delays 'No place to go: delays in Home Office provision of Section 4(1)(c) bail accommodation '
Many immigration detainees are reliant on the Home Office to provide them with accommodation on release given the absence of friends or family in the community who might be willing or able to accommodate them on release. Over recent years, unacceptable delays by the Home Office in providing bail accommodation have meant that significant numbers of detainees are denied timely access to justice as they need accommodation in order to apply for release.
BID established the Accommodation & Release Project to gather evidence on these delays to use in policy work with civil servants. The project also undertakes specialist casework, outreach, and policy work on bail addresses more broadly, including NOMS Approved Premises and licence address checks, and supports BID’s more complex applications for release from detention.
Inability to get a Home Office Section 4 (1)(c ) bail address in a timely fashion is also a major factor behind some of the very lengthy periods of immigration detention endured by detainees in the UK. Having to wait weeks or months to apply for a bail address before an application for release can be lodged adds to the length of time spent in detention.
You can download the report at the bottom of the page.
We found a clear and dramatic difference between the average (mean) time taken by the Home Office to make a grant of Initial Accommodation (IA) where facilities are shared between all residents, including women and children, and Standard Dispersal Accommodation (SDA) which is self-contained to a greater or lesser degree.
Our research found that the average total time taken by the Home Office to conclude the Section 4 (1)(c ) application process from application to grant letter where a dispersal bail address was provided was 103 days (over 14 weeks), with a range of 5 to 503 days (1 to 71 weeks). Where Initial Accommodation was granted as bail accommodation, the Home Office took on average 9 days (range 1-88 days) to make the grant.
The early stages in an application for a Section 4 (1)(c ) bail address, during which the appropriate type of bail accommodation is determined by the Home Office, still takes far too long. Our research found that on average, the Home Office is taking 46 days (more than 6 weeks) simply to acknowledge an application for a bail address and decide what type of accommodation they will provide, even before any request is made to contractors for this accommodation.
After that, accommodation providers (G4S, Serco and Clearel) with COMPASS contracts to provide bail accommodation are taking on average over 3 weeks to give a bail address to the Home Office. Although in 66% of the cases we studied COMPASS contractors sourced a bail address within 7 days, in the other 34% of the cases studied there were often significant delays (30 days, 84 days, 99 days). The contractual requirement is for accommodation providers to deliver a dispersal address within 9 working days.
The Home Office is also taking too long to ask contractors to provide accommodation.
- Mr B waited 42 days between the refusal of his first Section 4 (1)(c ) address by probation and the Home Office request for a second address from accommodation providers, and a further 24 days between the second refusal and the Home Office making a request for a third address (a total of 66 days or nearly 10 weeks during which time his application sat on a Home Office desk).
Once an address is provided by contractors, licence-related address approvals by probation services, where required, add a further step to the Section 4 (1)(c ) application process which is to some degree outside the control of the Home Office. However, the management of these checks by the Home Office appears to be hampered by a lack of up to date information on licence dates, which again adds delays to the total application time.
Taken together, the delays at each stage in the application process for Section 4 (1)(c ) bail support have the potential to lengthen the amount of time spent in detention and lengthen the bail cycle, both to an unacceptable degree. It is not uncommon for a grant of Home Office Section 4 (1)(c ) support to take several months to conclude, during which time the applicant is unable to exercise their right to apply for release on bail. Bail acts as an independent review of ongoing detention and a crucial safeguard for detainees given the absence of an upper limit on an individual’s immigration detention in the UK.
Downloads
No place to go: delays in Home Office provision of Section 4(1)(c) bail accommodation
