Overview

• Officials were told to urgently examine taxi use following accounts of a 250-mile, about £600 round trip arranged for an asylum seeker’s check-up.
• Accommodation providers arrange most journeys, with Clearsprings Ready Homes hiring PTS-247 for transport in parts of England and Wales.
• Legal filings cited show PTS-247 invoiced about £344,000 a month for roughly 6,000 trips and is suing Clearsprings for £2.75 million, which Clearsprings disputes for lack of evidence.
• The Home Office said it has no consolidated figures on how often taxis are used or the total cost and stated that providers are expected to meet high standards.
• Official data to June record just over 32,000 people in hotels and 111,084 asylum applications in the preceding year, as clinicians and politicians question spending and some hotel residents report illegal work due to financial pressure.