Asylum seekers transferred from Bibby Stockholm to Midlands hotel as Home Office wants to close barge by Christmas

Some migrants will be moved into a hotel in Wolverhampton, which is understood to be undergoing a change of use so it can house single male migrants.

It comes after Labour axed the barge as a form of migrant accommodation in a complete overhaul of the asylum system.

Its contract for the barge is due to end in January - Labour had the option to renew or extend but decided not to.

The Home Office said that carrying on the contract would have cost over £20million a year.

RAF Wetherfield, which houses 500 single male migrants, is also set to be shut by Labour, however no date has been set.

Both Bibby Stockholm and the ex-RAF base were created by the Conservatives to try and reduce the number of migrants in hotels, which was then costing £8million a day.

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A Home Office spokesperson said: “This government inherited an asylum system under unprecedented strain, with thousands stuck in a backlog without their claims processed.

“We have taken immediate action to restart asylum processing which will save an estimated £7 billion for the tax payer over the next ten years, and are delivering a major uplift in returns to remove people with no right to be in the UK.

"Over the long term this will reduce our reliance on hotels and costs of accommodation.

“We remain absolutely committed to ending the use of hotels for asylum seekers.”

The Home Office is now considering opening additional asylum hotels due to fears that they are running out of space to house migrants.

There is currently a backlog of almost 120,000 migrants who are still awaiting a decision on their claims.

Alongside this, Channel crossings have also surged by 12 per cent this year. 29,867 have arrived via small boat in 2024 alone.

Robert Jenrick, the former immigration minister, said: “Illegal migration is not a political football. It’s a national security emergency and a source of real anger for millions of Britons."

The Tory leadership hopeful, whose hometown is Wolverhampton, added: "Rather than playing politics by sending migrants to punish their opponents, Labour should get on with stopping the boats by strengthening, not scrapping, the Rwanda scheme.”

However, a Home Office source said: “On July 4, the Tories left Britain in the middle of the worst year ever for small boat arrivals, on track to exceed the total for 2023 before the end of September.

“They also halted most of the asylum decision-making, so thousands of people went into an ever growing backlog, and an expectation that substantially more asylum accommodation would be needed later in the year.

“The Government is acting step by step to get the system back on track, increase border security, end hotel use and re-establish an asylum and immigration system that is properly managed and controlled, so the system is fair.”