Serco has been instructed to “secure all” empty private rental properties across the whole country for six years and 11 months to house “illegal immigrants”.
False. Serco provides housing for asylum seekers only in certain areas of the UK, and says it sources property from a variety of places including private landlords and housing associations.
Facebook posts claiming Serco has been “instructed to secure all empty private rental properties across the whole country” to house “illegal immigrants” make a number of inaccurate points.
The posts first claim: “Well well well!! They they [sic] have now instructed SERCO to secure all empty private rental properties across the whole country for a period of 6 years 11 months to house illegal immigrants and they won't be paying any rent.”
Serco is a private company that is contracted to provide a range of public services. It has been the subject of other misleading claims we’ve previously debunked, including about how much it was paid for its role in Test and Trace and false claims it built the NHS Covid-19 app.
While Serco does provide some of England’s initial and dispersal accommodation for asylum seekers—some of whom may have arrived illegally—it only does this in certain parts of the UK. In 2019, the Home Office awarded new contracts to supply asylum housing in the Midlands and the East of England (grouped as one region), and the North West to Serco.
This initial accommodation is typically a hostel or hotel and is for asylum seekers who would otherwise be destitute. It is intended to be short term, but significant delays attributed to the Covid-19 pandemic have meant people have stayed in these much longer. Dispersal accommodation is longer-term temporary accommodation, which applicants will normally be able to stay in until their asylum claim has been fully determined.
It’s not clear exactly what the post means when it says the company will “secure all empty private rental properties” but Serco’s website has a page for property owners, investors and agents to get in touch if they are interested in Serco managing their properties.
A spokesperson for Serco told us: “Property is sourced from a variety of sources including private landlords and housing associations, and we work closely with local authorities, but we do not use empty homes.”
Serco’s website says it has a portfolio of over 7,000 properties, which supports “25,000 asylum seekers at any one time”. It explains: “Our operating model is based on leasing properties from a wide network of landlords, investors and agents with Serco acting as a Tenant.”
The posts refer to “a period of 6 years 11 months”, which likely refers to the duration of some of Serco’s contracts with property owners.
It is compulsory for properties leased for a term of more than seven years to be registered with the Land Registry, which involves paying a charge. Serco told us last year that this is the reason some contracts finish before seven years, but added at the time that not all contracts were this length.
It’s true that destitute asylum seekers are eligible for free housing, so anyone in asylum accommodation would not be paying rent, as the post claims. Serco pays the rent and bills for the asylum seeker accommodation it manages.
People seeking asylum are not able to claim normal benefits and are usually not allowed to work while their application is being processed. Some of the posts mention that money gets loaded onto a card each week, which is true. As we’ve explained before, they receive a weekly allowance of £49.18 per person in the household if their accommodation doesn’t provide meals and £8.86 if it does.
Many of the posts also go on to make other claims, including that asylum seekers get a new mobile phone on arrival, and that Muslims own most private rental properties in the UK.
But, as we’ve written before, asylum seekers do not receive phones as part of their standard support package from the Home Office, though a number of charities do provide donated phones to new arrivals.
Full Fact could not find any data on the religious background of private rental owners in the UK, however there’s no evidence to suggest they’re mostly owned by Muslims. The English Private Landlord Survey 2021 did collect data on the ethnicities of individual landlords in England registered with one of the three government-backed Tenancy Deposit Protection schemes. The online survey found that 88% identified as white, 4% Indian, 2% black, 1% Pakistani or Bangladeshi, with the remaining 5% selecting ‘other’.
This is not the first time we’ve seen false claims about asylum seeker support, including claims “illegal immigrants” receive £175 per week on a prepaid card, or that they receive more money annually than British pensioners.
You can find more of our work checking claims relating to immigration and asylum seekers on our website.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as partly false because Serco only provides asylum housing in certain areas of the UK, and says it sources property from a variety of places including private landlords and housing associations.
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