PPR first began reporting on health issues linked to the provision of inadequate, inappropriate and at times substandard food to people placed in hotel accommodation three years ago. Mears Group had recently begun placing asylum seekers in NI hotels, and as people began to document the challenges they faced in those settings, the inability to cook for their families and the insufficiency and unsuitability of the set meals provided were at the root of many of the health-related complaints they submitted throughout 2022 and 2023.

That issue hasn’t gone away -- on 17 December 2024 the Home Office Select Committee opened an inquiry into conditions for people placed by the Home Office in contingency asylum accommodation in hotels across the UK. The Committee received oral and written evidence containing numerous reports of substandard food contributing to weigh loss amongst children and adults.

By the second half of 2024, when – in response to a change in Tory policy speeding up asylum processing– more and more people began to be given refugee status (and with it, the right to work), responsibility for housing them transferred to the Housing Executive. The Housing Executive, in the face of an ever-growing social housing waiting list amidst a slowdown in construction, began placing homeless people in a set of new, different hotels across the north.

These newly-homeless people include some individuals who’d had to leave home following a relationship breakdown; others who’d found themselves evicted after failing to make ever-rising rents; and a range of others, including some newly-recognised refugees. Particularly amongst the latter group – who had only recently received the right to work – how to feed themselves and their families in their new circumstances posed a real problem. Almost all hotel settings reportedly lacked kitchen facilities; some did offer hot food, but at prices unaffordable to struggling families – even those already holding down jobs or receiving Universal Credit.

Unsurprisingly, parents have recounted going hungry themselves while feeding their children cereal and plain bread, meal after meal throughout their hotel stay, for lack of anything else.

These issues are not particular to Northern Ireland. Recent London-based research published in the Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics (vol. 38 issue 1, Feb 2025) found that malnutrition was prevalent among the cohort of homeless people in temporary accommodation that it focused on there, reflecting issues around poorer diet quality, mental health and high levels of food insecurity. It recommended that specific nutrition guidelines and standards be developed for this group. 

In light of these findings, PPR asked the Housing Executive, via Freedom of Information, how many of the emergency hotels it uses give homeless people access to cooking facilities or refrigerators; how many have an on-site restaurant or other cooked food provision, where food is available to purchase; and how many have neither access to neither.

The Housing Executive (FOI Response 695 of 25 March 2025) replied, “the Housing Executive does not hold any records with this information”. It added,

“It should be noted that the Housing Executive’s use of non-standard temporary accommodation is in the context of ensuring temporary accommodation is provided as per our statutory duty outlined in the Housing (NI) Order 1988. Any placements in non-standard are in the absence of other options and for as short a duration as possible. This concludes our response.”

By FOI Response 702 of 9 April 2025, the Housing Executive reported that at end December 2024 there had been a total of 464 households in ‘non-standard temporary accommodation’ across the north’s eleven council areas. Of them, 72 were families with children.  

The recommendations in the journal article mentioned above – though developed around a different set of people with some different issues -- are just as valid for families here. They include:

• particular attention to the risks of food insecurity amongst people in emergency accommodation 

• the development of nutrition guidelines for people in emergency accommodation

• mechanisms for nutrition screening and monitoring amongst them, backed by a system of medical referrals as needed; and

• standards surrounding cooking facilities, storage, and catering in temporary accommodation, to ensure adequate and high quality dietary intake.