More Than 50 Die in Home Office Asylum Seeker Accommodation in Past Five Years

London: More than 50 people have died in Home Office asylum seeker accommodation in the last five years, with the number increasing steeply over the past 18 months, the Guardian has learned. Three babies are recorded to have died, as well as three people who died as a result of Covid and four who killed themselves. Some of the deaths were because of health conditions such as heart problems, cancer or stroke. The 51 deaths, recorded in Home Office data and provided through a freedom of information request, date back to April 2016 with the most recent documented in June 2021. The causes of 31 of the 51 deaths, however, remain unconfirmed. There are about 60,000 people in Home Office accommodation, where the average age is considerably younger than the general population.

The information, provided in two responses to the Scottish Refugee Council and passed to the Guardian, marks some of the deaths as non-suspicious but offers no explanation for others. The Home Office says this is because a note explaining the cause of death was not recorded on their incident database. There has been a sharp increase in deaths in the last 18 months. The Home Office does not provide a year-on-year breakdown of the deaths in the FoI response, but does state that between February and June 2021 there were seven deaths. A separate FoI request by the Guardian revealed that there were 29 deaths in 2020. This suggests there were 15 deaths between 2016 and 2019.

Read more: Diane Taylor, Guardian, https://is.gd/wuDFcR