Revealed: The true cost of asylum hotels! Shocking!

Posted by Thoughts Of Mrs Colwyn Bay on

 

The cost of housing migrants has tripled to £4 million a day as Channel crossings continue to soar. (I thought we were in debt by billions, thus this was the need to cut the winter fuel allowance! So if we are so in debt how can we afford to pay for our boat friends? STOP THE BOATS and save the money for UK residents, and send the Army and the Navy in to turn the boats around.

Official data show that hotel and other asylum accommodation originally set to cost £4.5 billion between 2019 and 2029 is now expected to reach £15.3 billion.

In 2024 alone, the cost was £1.67 billion, equivalent to £4.6 million a day or £3,172 a minute.

The £15.3 billion is three times greater than Labour’s proposed benefits cut, and could pay to build up to 15 new hospitals.

It comes as Sir Keir Starmer faces mounting pressure over Labour’s immigration policy and the rise of Reform UK.

The Telegraph revealed last week that senior figures in the Government blamed asylum hotels for fuelling the surge in support for Reform UK in the local elections.

On Wednesday night, Pat McFadden, Sir Keir’s right-hand man, admitted that Labour faced a generational battle with Reform for Britain’s future.

There are fears that disillusioned voters have linked the money spent on asylum hotels with high-profile spending cuts, including to the winter fuel allowance for pensioners and disability benefits. 

Profits of £400m

The figures from the National Audit Office (NAO) suggested that asylum hotels could be more profitable for companies holding the contracts than other types of housing.

Clearsprings Ready Homes, Mears Group and Serco, the three suppliers handed the 10-year accommodation contracts, are estimated to have already made a profit of almost £400 million in the five years since September 2019.

The contractors are responsible for finding private rental accommodation for asylum seekers who are dispersed across the country and for sub-contracting hotels for migrants coming across the Channel by small boat.

There were 38,000 migrants housed in hotels as of December 2024, and a further 66,000 asylum seekers were in “dispersed accommodation”, which is mainly self-catering houses and flats But The Telegraph understands that Labour’s plan to “smash the gangs” has been frustrated by the European Commission, which is blocking the UK from accessing important intelligence on people smugglers.

Ministers are considering lengthening the time migrants have to wait before they can make their residency permanent from five years to 10 years unless they meet certain conditions such as passing tougher English tests.

The changes, part of Sir Keir Starmer’s immigration White Paper due next week, would make it harder for migrants to get indefinite leave where there were questions over their financial status or whether they had spent too much time outside the UK since arriving.

Home Office officials have requested greater access to Europol data about gangs operating on the Continent, as part of a joint effort to stop migrants reaching Calais.

Sources said the European Commission was resisting the disclosure of further intelligence as negotiations continued over a “reset” with Europe.

Brussels is also refusing to give the UK access to fingerprint data and a system that would identify illegal migrants who had already applied for asylum elsewhere before reaching the UK.

Officers from the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) are embedded with Europol in the Netherlands to help disrupt the flow of migrants from the Middle East to northern France, where they use small boats to travel to Britain. More than 150,000 migrants have crossed the Channel since 2019.

The Europol Information System, the main intelligence hub used to track the gangs, would significantly enhance the UK’s deterrence operations, sources said.

But that information is only partially shared with Britain because it has not been a full member of Europol since Brexit. In exchange, European officers have been locked out of “invaluable” intelligence collected by the NCA.

European Commission officials are reluctant to allow the UK access to some of the EU’s most precious data without receiving the funding and sovereignty concessions that member states provide.

The EU provides the majority of Europol’s funding, and sources close to discussions said it exercised an effective veto on access to data by non-members.

It follows reports that the EU is also blocking access to immigration systems that would help Border Force track whether migrants had claimed asylum elsewhere before arriving on small boats.

Meanwhile, much of the Home Office’s budget has been used up with the cost of asylum hotels, with a looming spending review that will set day-to-day budgets for the next three years.

Clearsprings is now set to be paid £7.3 billion over the 10 years from 2019 to 2029, according to the NAO, while Serco is expected to get £5.5 billion and Mears will receive £2.5 billion.

The overall number of people seeking asylum housed in Home Office accommodation rose by 134 per cent between December 2019 and 2024, from 47,000 to 110,000.

The spending watchdogs said this was because of the increase in people arriving in the UK by crossing the English Channel and a rise in those claiming asylum who were previously detained under the Conservative government’s Illegal Migration Act 2023.

Since the Government came to power in July last year, 23 hotels have been closed, while contracts were discontinued at three large sites, including the Bibby Stockholm barge. Labour had pledged to end the use of hotels for asylum seekers during its general election campaign.

Napier Barracks in Folkestone, Kent, is also due to close and be returned to the Ministry of Defence in September.

Recommended

I work at a migrant hotel. Many of them will never work a day in their lives Responding to the NAO’s findings, a Home Office spokesman said: “As this report shows, we inherited an asylum system in chaos with tens of thousands stuck in a backlog, claims not being processed and disastrous contracts that were wasting millions in taxpayer money.

“We’ve taken immediate action to fix it – increasing asylum decision-making by 52 per cent and removing 24,000 people with no right to be here, meaning there are now fewer asylum hotels open than since the election.

“By restoring grip on the system and speeding up decision-making, we will end the use of hotels and are forecast to save the taxpayer £4 billion by the end of 2026.”

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for your comment