Former First Minister of Northern Ireland Arlene Foster has hit out at the British government, as their latest plans to house asylum seekers in Britain has been revealed.
It is understood that the Home Office have accumulated 16,000 properties exclusively for asylum seekers, in an attempt to reduce the cost of keeping them in hotels.
Currently the UK government spends an average of £8million a day on hotel accommodation. As of June 2023, there were over 50,000 asylum seekers staying in around 400 UK hotels.
The latest move by the government would potentially reduce costs to as little as £30 a day for dispersed accommodation, compared with £150 a day for hotels.
Arlene Foster said the plans are the 'ghettoisation' of Britain
GB News
A Home Office insider has claimed there is a "strong preference" for dispersal accommodation because it is "so much cheaper" and "much more discreet" than hotels.
Contractors have reportedly offered landlords five-year guaranteed full rent deals to take over the management of their properties to house asylum seekers in them as opposed to private renters.
In a fiery discussion on GB News, Arlene Foster and Reform UK's Richard Tice condemned the plans and branded the move "wrong" and a "ghettoisation" of Britain's streets.
Tice claimed Britons have told him that their "whole street" is now filled with asylum seekers in accommodation.
Richard Tice said the government have been 'incompetent' with processing asylum applications
GB News
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Arlene fumed: "We've had hotels, we've had the Bibby Stockholm and now we're moving people into rented accommodation. I think it's a huge mistake.
"The government are struggling to find a way to deal with the huge amount of immigrants that there are."
Richard Tice then added: "The numbers are much bigger than this. This has been going on for months and months. It increases rents locally, because it's taking rental stock out of the normal open market for British citizens.
"The likelihood is they'll be allowed to stay in these properties if they're granted, and some 70 per cent are granted. So you can see where all of this is going. It's an absolute catastrophe of incompetence."
Nearly 2,000 migrants made the crossing to the UK from France in January alone
PA
Discussing the impact on Britons, Foster said the move will cause "huge resentment" from those looking to get on the properly ladder and will "really affect local communities".
In defence of the migrants, host Pip Tomson argued: "They've got to go somewhere, so where can they go?"
Richard Tice hit back, stating: "What they actually need to do is to determine the applications as it used to happen 20 plus years ago, within a fortnight, make a quick decision and then remove those that are rejected. That's what needs to happen.
"We know the vast majority are economic migrants, and as we're hearing with the Christianity scandal, too many of them frankly are fake and fraudulent."
A Home Office spokesman said: "We continue to work across government and with local authorities to identify a range of accommodation options to reduce the unacceptable use of hotels which cost £8million a day.
"The government remains committed to engaging with local authorities and key stakeholders as part of this process. We are working to procure sufficient dispersal accommodation to meet our statutory obligation."
