The outsourcing firm Serco was awarded new contracts to house vulnerable asylum seekers despite having been fined nearly £7m for previous failings, the Guardian can reveal. Despite concerns by leading charities that outsourcing the service had resulted in “squalid, unsafe, slum housing conditions”, in January the Home Office awarded Serco, Clearsprings and the company Mears new contracts to provide housing for asylum seekers for 10 years from September. Serco was fined a total of £2.8m for its contracts to provide asylum seeker housing in Scotland and Northern Ireland over that period, and just over £4m for its contract in north-west England. In January the firm was awarded two contracts to provide asylum seeker housing: – one in the north-west and one in the Midlands and the east of England, from September. “How could Serco incur millions of pounds of fines over the duration of the contract, only then to be handed even bigger and more expensive contracts?

Source: The Guardian June 20, 2019 13:09 UTC