Home/Care providers/Asylum Dispersal Accommodation
Care-sector property
Property for asylum dispersal accommodation.
Maine Property Solutions is a property company. We find, prepare and manage buildings — we do not provide care, support or supervision, and we are not registered with CQC or Ofsted. Care and support in any property we manage is provided by the registered provider, not by us.
We are looking for our first placement in this sector. Tell us the specification and we will look for it.
Asylum accommodation is procured centrally by the Home Office through a small number of prime contractors. It is the least open door in this lane for a landlord, and we would rather say that at the top of the page than let you find it out later.
Who buys it
Who buys it — Asylum Dispersal Accommodation
The Home Office, not any local authority. It holds a statutory duty to accommodate destitute asylum seekers, and it discharges that duty through contracts rather than through the housing benefit system. No council commissions this.
Who is registered, and who is not
Who is registered, and who is not — Asylum Dispersal Accommodation
There is no registration regime at all — not for the operator and not for the property. Access is contractual, through the prime contractors, which means the qualifying question is procurement rather than regulation.
How it is paid for
How it is paid for — Asylum Dispersal Accommodation
The money is a central Home Office contract and it sits wholly outside the welfare system. There is no housing benefit route into this sector at all, which makes it structurally different from every other lease-family sector on this site.
What the property has to be
What the property has to be — Asylum Dispersal Accommodation
Two product types. Self-contained houses or flats for families, and HMOs for single people. Dispersed accommodation means ordinary houses and flats in ordinary residential areas rather than purpose-built sites, and allocation is on a no-choice basis with no requirement to stay within a district.
What the lease looks like
What the lease looks like — Asylum Dispersal Accommodation
Where property does reach this sector it is normally through a lease to a contractor or its supply chain rather than a direct relationship with the Home Office. The commercial terms are the contractor's.
What the building has to carry
What the building has to carry — Asylum Dispersal Accommodation
Ordinary landlord duties, and the HMO regime wherever single people share. Fire risk assessment, gas safety at intervals of no more than twelve months, fixed wiring inspected at least every five years, alarms, and freedom from serious hazards.
Honest limits
What is not possible here
There is no published direct landlord route into this sector
Asylum accommodation is supplied through the Home Office's contracted providers — Serco, Mears and Clearsprings. We have found no published route by which a landlord contracts with the Home Office directly. That is the honest position and it is the reason this page makes no offer it cannot keep.
Being exempt accommodation does not exempt you from HMO licensing
The word exempt in exempt accommodation refers to housing benefit, not to licensing, and the two are routinely confused. Being exempt accommodation does not exempt a building from HMO licensing. Mandatory licensing is triggered by five or more people in two or more households; what kind of occupancy agreement people hold makes no difference to whether a building is an HMO; and the single care setting that regulations lift out of the HMO definition is a registered care home, which is not what any of this is. Additional and selective licensing schemes can catch a property below the mandatory threshold as well.
The line, drawn plainly
What we can do, and what we cannot
What we can do
- Find property against a written specification — size, layout, location, adaptation, tenure and the compliance set the building has to carry.
- Prepare it: works, furnishing, certificates and the paperwork a provider or a commissioner will want to see before it takes the building on.
- Manage the building afterwards, if that is what is wanted — repairs, contractors, certificate renewals and the landlord side of the relationship.
- Put the proposed terms, the works and the timetable in front of you in writing before anything is committed.
What we do not do
- We do not provide care, support or supervision, of any kind, to anyone.
- We are not registered with CQC and we are not registered with Ofsted. A landlord letting a building to a care provider is carrying on neither regulated activity and has nothing to register.
- We do not employ, supply or manage care or support staff, and we make no claim about the vetting of anyone else's.
- We hold no framework place, no contract and no position on any supplier list with any council, health body or government department.
- We hold no care-sector placement anywhere. Maine Property Solutions operates two properties, both in Coventry, and has no managed instruction in any sector.
The rest of the lane
Other care sectors we can source property for
Your Questions
Questions we get asked
Not covered here? Tell us the specification and we will answer for your situation.
Can I let my property to the Home Office directly?
Not on any published route we can point you to. Supply runs through the Home Office's contracted providers — Serco, Mears and Clearsprings — and we have not found a published direct landlord route. Anyone telling you otherwise should be asked to show you the route.
Do you have a relationship with those contractors?
No. We hold no contract, no supply-chain place and no introduction with any of them. We are looking for our first placement in this sector.
Is this funded through housing benefit?
No. The money is a central Home Office contract and it sits wholly outside the welfare system. That is what makes it different from most of the sectors on this site.
What kind of property is used?
Ordinary houses and flats in residential areas: self-contained units for families, and HMOs for single people. It is dispersed stock, not purpose-built accommodation.