Asylum seeker housing costs to soar to £1.2 BILLION warns spending watchdog

Last August, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pledged to end the use of hotels to house asylum seekers.

More than 45,000 asylum seekers are currently being accommodated in hotels across the country, at a cost to the tax payer of £8million a day.

As part of the plan to move away from the over reliance on hotel accommodation, the Home Office announced the redevelopment of a number of old military bases and other sites, to provide large scale asylum accommodation.

By the end of March, the department expects to have spent at least £230million developing four major projects – the Bibby Stockholm barge in Portland, the former RAF bases at Scampton in Lincolnshire and Wethersfield in Essex, and ex-student accommodation in Huddersfield.

But, so far, just two of the sites are open and were only housing around 900 people by the end of January, according to the watchdog’s findings.

The latest report is likely to make uncomfortable reading for ministers, and comes just days after the Home Office announced a partial climb down on the numbers it intends to house at the two former RAF bases.

Originally, up to 2,000 young male asylum seekers were expected to be accommodated at RAF Scampton, the former home of the famed 617 “Dambuster” Squadron and the Red Arrows.

On Monday, the Home Office confirmed that number would now be capped at 800 instead.

Officials are also considering cutting the maximum number of migrants housed at the former Wethersfield base.

The Audit Office report comes in the wake of comments by former Home Secretary Dame Priti Patel, who claimed the Government’s asylum accommodation system was in need of reform and there were “serious questions” to be asked of her former department.

Head of the NAO Gareth Davies said: “The Home Office has made progress in reducing the use of hotels for asylum accommodation. Yet the pace at which the Government pursued its plans led to increased risks, and it now expects large sites to cost more than using hotel accommodation.”

The department pursued the programme despite “repeated” assessments that it “could not be delivered as planned”, Davies warned.

He called on the Home Office to “reflect on lessons learned from establishing its large sites programme at speed and improve co-ordination with central and local government, given wider housing pressures”.

While the Government has “made progress” by cutting the number of hotels to house asylum seekers, and had stopped using 60 by the end of January, it has “incurred losses and increased risk” by “rapidly progressing its plans to establish large sites”, the NAO said.

“The Home Office originally assessed that large sites would be around £94million cheaper than hotels. Its latest estimates suggest they will cost £46million more than using hotels," the watchdog said.

According to the findings, the Home Office originally estimated set-up costs at the two former RAF bases would be £5million each, but they soared to £49million for Wethersfield and £27million for Scampton.

So far only Wethersfield – which has a capacity of 1,700 – and the Bibby Stockholm, with space for around 500 men, are housing asylum seekers.

But both sites were housing just under half the number of migrants the Home Office expected would be there at the end of January, with 576 at Wethersfield and 321 on the Bibby barge at that point.

The Home Office expects Scampton to start housing asylum seekers from April, with Huddersfield following in May.

Commenting on the report, Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said: "This report is staggering. The British taxpayer is already paying out eye watering sums on asylum hotels and now it turns out the sites they promised would save money are costing the taxpayer even more. Rishi Sunak has taken the Tories chaos and failure in the asylum system to a new level."

A Home Office spokesperson said: “We have always been clear that the use of asylum hotels is unacceptable, and that’s why we acted swiftly to reduce the impact on local communities by moving asylum seekers on to barges and former military sites.

"While we must provide adequate accommodation for asylum seekers who would otherwise be destitute, thanks to the actions we have taken to maximise use of existing space and our work to cut small boat crossings by a third last year, the cost of hotels will fall - and we are now closing dozens of asylum hotels every month to return them to communities.

“But we have further to go, which is why we are passing the Safety of Rwanda Bill, deterring Channel crossings and get flights off to Rwanda - because it is only when people are discouraged from taking those journeys that we can end asylum hotel use for good.

“While the NAO's figures include set up costs, it is currently better value for money for the taxpayer to continue with these sites than to use hotels.”