Hundreds of people seeking asylum in the UK will be moved to military sites as the government aims to end the use of hotels to house them.
The Home Office confirmed that two barracks – Cameron barracks in Inverness and Crowborough training camp in East Sussex – would be used to house about 900 men temporarily. Officials are working to identify more sites.
The two sites were used to accommodate Afghan families evacuated during the withdrawal from Kabul in 2021 while they were resettled elsewhere. That work ended earlier this year.
On Monday, a parliamentary committee called the use of asylum hotels “failed, chaotic and expensive”.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “We are furious at the level of illegal migrants and asylum hotels. This government will close every asylum hotel. Work is well under way, with more suitable sites being brought forward to ease pressure on communities and cut asylum costs.”
Options being considered include military and industrial sites, temporary facilities and disused accommodation. According to the Times, the Home Office believes up to 10,000 people could ultimately be housed on military sites, with some prefabricated structures likely to be added to some of them.
The defence minister Luke Pollard said the first two sites were being used as proof of concept, and conversations about using the bases for accommodation had been taking place for months.
“Some bases are small, some bases are larger in terms of numbers, but I think the conversation around the bases that are in the news today is about proving this concept, is about seeing whether this works. We believe that these bases can provide adequate accommodation for asylum seekers,” he told BBC Breakfast.
Pollard sought to stress the quality of accommodation, saying: “This isn’t luxury accommodation, by any means. But it’s adequate for what is required, and that will enable us to take the pressure off the asylum hotel estates and enable those to be closed at a faster rate.”
As of June this year, about 32,000 asylum seekers were being housed in hotels, down from a peak of more than 56,000 in 2023 but 2,500 more than at the same point last year.
Expected costs of Home Office accommodation contracts for 2019-29 have tripled from £4.5bn to £15.3bn after what the Commons home affairs committee called a “dramatic increase” in demand.
On Monday, Keir Starmer said he was “frustrated and angry” as he sought to blame the previous government for leaving a “huge mess” in the asylum system by failing to process people’s claims.
Angus MacDonald, the Liberal Democrat MP for Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire, said that while he supported the scheme, he found the choice of the barracks in his constituency a “bit odd” because it was in the city centre and an open barracks, and he had believed the scheme was about moving people away from large population centres and into more secure locations.
