Asylum
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps are being taken to ensure that relevant local stakeholders, including i) local authorities, ii) local police forces, and iii) other relevant authorities, have access to information on asylum seekers, refugees, irregular migrants including but not limited to name and date of birth, gender, nationality, criminal record, health record, and previous residential history.
Answered by Alex Norris
An updated protocol has been produced, with support from police representatives and was shared in mid-October 2025.
For Asylum Accommodation, the agreement now includes Home Office data sharing commitments between NPCC and HO Asylum Support. A summary is highlighted below:
- In accordance with provisions of General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018, any request by police for sharing of personal data relating to current occupants of asylum accommodation premises must have a lawful basis and be necessary and proportionate to the proposed use of data.
- Enquiries or requests from police for one-off or small-scale data or information regarding personal details of individual service users, or occupants of individual properties should be directed to, and met by, the Home Office’s accommodation providers in the first instance.
- Where police forces encounter a concern with a Home Office accommodation provider’s service, compliance or reasonable timeliness of response to data requests, concerns can be escalated to the appropriate Home Office Service Delivery Team.
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