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asylum seekers Migrant hotels could be relocated to pop-up buildings, with an announcement to be made “within weeks”, a minister has said, as the government struggles to get control of the asylum accommodation crisis.
Pop-up buildings have been used before deal with prison overcrowding, The prison grounds have rooms with en-suite bathrooms, a bed, desk and TV.
Now Housing Secretary steve reed has said the government is considering a “modular” type of construction to ensure new sites can be developed rapidly, as part of plans to phase out the use of hotels “completely”. Speaking to the media on Monday morning, Mr Reid said progress had been made on provision of shelter accommodation Will be announced “within the week”.
This comes after receiving a scathing report home office had ruined billions of pounds on expatriate hotel contracts as a result of mismanagement and inefficiency. A cross-party group of MPs also found that officials have failed to recover millions of pounds of excess profits owed by accommodation running companies.
Mears, one of the housing providers, said on Monday that they had now returned the payment to the Home Office.
Mr Reid said: “You can use modular forms of building. This means it can go up much faster than in a normal situation, and there are planning processes we can use in these circumstances to make sure there are not delays in the planning system.
“I’m expecting there to be announcements on that in a few weeks, so we’ll just have to wait and see.”
He further said that home office Former military bases were being considered to house migrants, he said: “We can use bigger sites and bring people there and eliminate the use of hotels altogether. That’s where we want to get to.”
Sir Keir Starmer said on Monday he was “disappointed and angry” at the “mess” he inherited from the Tory government when it took power.
Speaking about the backlog of asylum claims, he said: “Under the previous government we had years where they didn’t process claims, so thousands of people didn’t have their claims processed” which put pressure on housing.
former home secretary Yvette Cooper It was hinted in September that the Home Office could accommodate asylum seekers In “modular buildings” on industrial or ex-military sites.
Pop-up cabins are already being used to expand capacity at RAF Wethersfield, a former military base in Essex, which is the Home Office’s largest refuge accommodation site.
Plans were made to install the cabin at RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire, but this was canceled when Labor came to power.
Building company Portakabin has also said it is ready to strike a deal with the Home Office to provide emergency prefabs for asylum seekers.
Mr Reid said: “We want to get it right, but the intention is to get those former military bases which are an example of where we can use larger sites and bring people in there and eliminate the use of hotels altogether. That’s where we want to get to.”
The Home Office, which has promised to end the use of hotels by 2029, was housing around 103,000 people by June 2025. While the number of asylum seekers in hotels has declined compared to the peak, there were 32,059 people in this accommodation in June, still up from the previous year.
In a damning report on Home Office asylum accommodation published on Monday, MPs warned ministers not to use larger sites instead of hotels as they have been found to be more expensive.
In one example, the Home Office spent £15.4m Buying a site at the former prison Northie in East Sussex, To provide asylum accommodation, only to conclude that it was unsuitable and could not be used. The Department proceeded with the purchase despite clear warnings that significant work would be required to make the site suitable for use.
The Home Office has said it also plans to use medium-sized sites to house asylum seekers, with space for between 200 and 700 people.
This will include the purchase of vacant tower blocks, teaching training colleges and student accommodation. While housing providers have been sourcing these sites for some time, some buildings have faced problems with planning permission or the amount of investment required to bring them up to standard.
MPs on the Home Affairs Committee have said that civil servants do not yet have “a clear and achievable plan for the delivery of medium sites at that scale”. [the Home Office] needs”
The only large site currently being used to hold asylum seekers wethersfield,
MPs also warned that the department provided little oversight over how the massive housing contracts were delivered.
The estimated cost of these contracts has more than tripled between 2019-2029, from £4.5bn to £15.5bn.
A spokesperson for Mears said: “The contracts include clauses to smooth out payments over time and share profits above the agreed contract level back to the Home Office. We work with the Home Office on an open book basis and, following an independent audit, Mears has returned the appropriate and agreed payments to the Home Office.”
Dame Karen Bradley, chair of the committee, said the Home Office should be “split” into two separate departments to manage borders and crime.