The Home Office is planning to spend billions on asylum seekers as more than 100,000 will be handed houses, flats or bedsits whilst taxpayers are finding it difficult to get on the housing ladder.
Minister are being accused of taking taxpayers “for a ride” as thousands of Brits “have nowhere to live” but asylum seekers will be pushed to the top of the ladder for housing.
Currently there is 66,683 asylum seekers living in “dispersal accommodation” and 32,345 living a life of luxury in hotels at taxpayers’ expense.
According to an inquiry by the Home Affairs Select Committee has warned these numbers could rise to more than 100,000.
The government is planning to close migrant hotels by the next general election; however they will provide accommodation for asylum seekers and will engage in contracts with Serco, Mears and Clearspring Ready Homes (CRH).
Officials have said, “By increasing DA [dispersal accommodation] pricing and the volume caps, this should have given AASC providers greater buying power within the rental market, allowing them to increase capacity.
“However, in practice, DA pricing uplifts have not consistently supported the level of DA capacity growth anticipated.”
Reform UK’s Lee Anderson told the Daily Express: “Companies such as Serco, Mears, and CRH plan to relocate over 100,000 migrants to towns and villages across the country — fuelling crime rates, contributing to the destruction of British culture, and getting rich in the process.
Decent Britons work hard every day—paying high taxes, supporting their families, and contributing to society.
“They should not have to worry about groups of unidentified, fighting-age males roaming the streets in their communities. Only Reform will put a stop to this lunacy.”
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said, “These figures reveal that the Government doesn’t believe its own claims to smash the gangs.
“They are budgeting for over 100,000 people – mainly illegal immigrants – to be accommodated in flats and homes that young people here can only dream of.
“The spending review showed that even in 2029 the Government plans to spend £2.5 billion a year housing illegal immigrants.
“They are taking British taxpayers for a ride by splashing billions of our hard-earned money on putting up illegal immigrants, when hard-working British young people have nowhere to live.
“This madness has to end. Every illegal immigrant who arrives here must be immediately removed.”
Robert Bates, Research Director at the Centre for Migration Control, said: “Politicians of both parties have allowed the asylum system to descend into chaos.
“A 50% increase in the volume of dispersal accommodation places required is testament to the anarchy we have seen at our borders in recent years.
“The Home Office is clearly working on the assumption that it will need to procure tens of thousands of new rooms to match the growing number of illegal migrants entering our country but are hiding the true scale of these plans from the British public.
“These figures show that many more communities will be blighted by the imposition of undocumented males into their neighbourhood, that those looking to enter the rental market are now competing with a government prepared to pay over the odds for housing, and that large corporations are continuing to profit from the misery that our asylum system is imposing on the country.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “According to previously-published data, the number of asylum-seekers in supported accommodation across the UK reached a peak of just below 125,000 in Autumn 2023, when there were 400 hotels in use at a cost of almost £9 million a day.
“By the time the current government came to office, asylum decision-making had collapsed, and thousands of people were stuck in limbo in asylum accommodation with no prospect of their cases being processed.
“That was the situation the current government inherited, but it has taken immediate action to fix it – increasing asylum decision-making by 52% and removing 30,000 people with no right to be here.
“Our objective now is to build on that progress, by clearing the asylum backlog, removing more failed asylum-seekers from the UK, ending the use of expensive asylum hotels, and reducing the total number of people in need of asylum support.”
