Overseas aid budget cut to meet soaring costs of housing refugees in UK

Watchdog finds Home Office reliance on private contracts to house refugees, often in hotels, forced Foreign Office to slice its budget

A third of the UK’s overseas aid budget was spent by the Home Office on housing refugees in a poorly managed programme that contained few cost-saving incentives, the government’s independent watchdog on aid has found.

In a bid to control soaring costs, Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) recommends introducing a cap on the proportion of the aid budget that can be spent on in-donor refugee costs.