Housing illegal immigrants in barges and former RAF bases will cost £46 million more than using hotels, according to the National Audit Office (NAO).
By the end of March, the Home Office estimates it will have spent £230 million on four projects: RAF Scampton, the Bibby Stockholm barge in Dorset, a former student accommodation block in Huddersfield, and another derelict air force base at Wethersfield in Essex.
But only two of them are in operation and were housing just 900 people by the end of January, said the NAO.
The NAO also revealed the Home Office was considering cutting the numbers housed at the former RAF Wethersfield.
The watchdog’s report said: “The Home Office originally assessed that large sites would be around £94 million cheaper than hotels. Its latest estimates suggest they will cost £46 million more than using hotels, although the Home Office believes they will provide more appropriate and sustainable accommodation.”
Home Office Urged to ‘Reflect on Lessons Learned’
Mr. Davies said the Home Office should “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.”The NAO said it accepted the Home Office had faced big rises in the number of illegal immigrants, with 67,300 asylum applications in the 12 months to December 2023, almost double the number received in the same period in 2019.
It said 95,300 asylum applications were awaiting a decision, which represented 128,800 people as some included dependants.
Those who do not have a legal right to remain in Britain are not allowed to work and are therefore housed at public expense.
The report comes after former Home Secretary Dame Priti Patel told the House of Commons last week the government’s asylum accommodation system was in need of reform and there were “serious questions” to be asked of the Home Office.
The NAO said uncertainty over the deterrent impact of the Illegal Migration Act—which gave the Home Office the right to transfer asylum seekers to a “safe third country”—made it difficult “to plan what accommodation it will need in the future.”
“Detained and non-detained accommodation have very different requirements, and it is not straightforward to repurpose non-detained accommodation so it can be used to detain people,” said the report.
The NAO said the Home Office had plans to reopen detention centres at Haslar—a former prison—in Hampshire and Campsfield House in Oxfordshire, to house those awaiting deportation.
Labour Says Taxpayers ‘Paying Out Eye-Watering Sums’
Labour’s shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said the NAO figures were “staggering” and said, “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. [Prime Minister] Rishi Sunak has taken the Tories’ chaos and failure in the asylum system to a new level.”A Home Office spokeswoman said, “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.”
She said it was “unacceptable” to use hotels but added, “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.”
