NRPF Connect data report

Increasing costs to councils

The cost of providing accommodation and financial support to NRPF households continued to rise as councils reported a combined £77.9m in spend - a 22% increase from the end of 2021/22, far above inflation.

The rise appears to be driven by increasing per-case costs, particularly for adults with care and support needs.

Number of households on long-term support remain high despite immigration resolutions

Following our 2021/22 recommendations, in January 2023 the Home Office NRPF team began a review of the immigration cases of households that had been supported for 1000 days or more.

Despite the success of this review in resolving many long-standing claims, as more cases crossed the 1,000-day threshold the overall number of long-standing cases remained the same. 

Grants of leave to remain still the most common reason for case closure

64% of adults and 77% of families who exited support did so following a grant of leave to remain.

This demonstrates that the majority of people and children supported by councils have a long-term future in the UK.

EU-exit still impacting social care services

EU nationals and people with EU-related leave, including pre-settled status, continue to make up a significant portion of NRPF households supported by councils: 24% of adults with care needs and 19% of families.

Councils received just under 1,000 new referrals for this group in 2022/23.

Councils not fully recording support for adults with care and support needs

Adult social care reported a 37% rise in the cost of providing accommodation and financial support to adults with NRPF from the end of 2021/22, to £24.4m.

However, with only 53 out of 82 councils recording financial data for adults, it is highly likely that this group remains significantly underreported. 

Read the full report

The 2022-2023 data from NRPF Connect has been provided on a regional and national basis in order to demonstrate cost pressures at a local level and to help inform strategic planning and service development.

NRPF Connect data report 2022-2023 - East of England

NRPF Connect data report 2022-2023 - East Midlands 

NRPF Connect data report 2022-2023 - Greater London 

NRPF Connect data report 2022-2023 - North East 

NRPF Connect data report 2022-2023 - North West 

NRPF Connect data report 2022-2023 - Scotland 

NRPF Connect data report 2022-2023 - South East 

NRPF Connect data report 2022-2023 - South West 

NRPF Connect data report 2022-2023 - West Midlands 

NRPF Connect data report 2022-2023 - Yorkshire and the Humber 

Recommendations for councils

The data demonstrates that councils play a significant role in alleviating homelessness and destitution for families, adults with care needs, and care leavers who have no recourse to public funds.

Service managers and strategic leads may wish to consider implementing the following recommendations in their service/authority:

• The role of social care in providing long-term support to people with no recourse to public funds must form a key component of council-wide strategies, such as those relating to homelessness, violence against women and girls, and refugee and migrant inclusion.
• Requests for support will remain high in the absence of wider national policy or funding changes, so consider ways of improving the coordination of no recourse to public funds services in your authority in order to to minimise cost-pressures on already over-stretched budgets.
• Use NRPF Connect data to support ‘invest to save’ arguments and develop a specialist response, which may involve ensuring appropriate staffing capacity, equipping staff with knowledge to manage the response effectively, and enabling access to immigration advice.
• Maximise the use of NRPF Connect across the council, particularly within adult social care, and ensure staff record caseloads accurately to benefit from the support of the NRPF Network and Home Office in this complex area of practice.
• Ensure that staff operating NRPF Connect refer to our user support information to get the most out of the system and to help the dedicated Home Office NRPF Team to do their work as effectively as possible.
• Share practice and learning is across the council and with other councils, which can be done through attending a regional NRPF Network meeting.

Recommendations for central government

The data that local authorities report through NRPF Connect continues inform the policy recommendations we have made for central government, which cover three themes:

• Ending homelessness and eradicating child poverty
• Reducing pressures on local government
• Reducing health inequalities

Meaningful change can only be achieved if the UK government ends the use of the NRPF condition. However, as that would represent a significant change in immigration policy, it is necessary to consider how existing policy impacts can be mitigated. Therefore, we have made a series of recommendations regarding changes to immigration policies and procedures, and access to services, that would support efforts to end homelessness and child poverty, and reduce health inequalities. 

We have also made a number of recommendations to reduce pressures on councils. With costs of supporting households with no recourse to public funds increasing, and households still receiving support on a long-term basis whilst they are resolving immigration issues, the UK government needs to take steps to ensure that such support is only required as a short-term intervention, including undertaking a one-off exercise to clear the backlog of long-standing cases. However, in the absence of full funding and a strategic approach, the government needs to consider providing grant funding to enable councils to invest in a specialist response and improve their support to households with no recourse to public funds.

We will work with local government partners to raise these recommendations with central government. 

Councils using NRPF Connect are requested to review and update their data and can refer to our user support information.