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Refugee organisations have described plans to house thousands of asylum seekers in two disused military sites as fanciful and too expensive as local discontent grows.
The Home Office has confirmed that two barracks: Cameron in Inverness and Crowborough training camp in East Sussex, will 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 process ended earlier this year.
Officials say the 900 will be the first of as many as 10,000 people whom the Home Office is hoping to house on military sites as it works with the Ministry of Defence to find several more disused sites.
The chief executive of the Refugee Council, Enver Solomon, said plans to house such large numbers in barracks were tried by the last government and failed.
“The plans released overnight by the Home Office to house 10,000 people seeking asylum on military sites are fanciful, too expensive and too logistically difficult,” he said.
“The government could end the use of hotels next year, without resorting to camps, by putting in place a one-off scheme that would give permission to stay for a limited period – subject to rigorous security checks – to people from countries almost certain to be recognised as refugees.
“This would enable people who will ultimately remain in the UK to be able to get on with their lives, finding jobs and contributing to their communities,” he said.
The chief executive of Care4Calais, Steve Smith, said Labour was breaking its promise to end the use of barracks to house refugees, exposing the taxpayer to soaring costs.
“Opening more camps will only serve to re-traumatise more people who have already survived horrors such as war and torture. And, as the National Audit Office has outlined in respect of Wethersfield and the aborted project at Scampton, they cost more than the hotels they seek to replace when you include the exorbitant setup costs of such sites,” he said.
Highland council has accused the UK government of failing to consider the local impact of moving hundreds of asylum seekers to barracks in the centre of Inverness.
In a strongly worded statement, it said it had repeatedly asked the Home Office for confirmation of its plans to use Cameron barracks, which is within walking distance of tourist attractions such as Inverness castle, as transitional accommodation for asylum seekers.
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A joint statement from the council’s convener, Bill Lobban, its SNP leader, Raymond Bremner, and the opposition leader, Alasdair Christie, issued on Tuesday morning said: “We await more details on how Inverness was selected over other available locations and how community cohesion will be maintained given the large number of asylum seekers planned relative to the local population.
“Our main concern is the impact this proposal will have on community cohesion given the scale of the proposals as they currently stand. Inverness is a relatively small community, but the potential impact locally and across the wider Highlands appears not to have been taken into consideration by the UK government.”
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 to 2029 have more than tripled from £4.5bn to £15.3bn after what the Commons home affairs committee called a dramatic increase in demand.
The defence minister Luke Pollard appeared to suggest on Tuesday that the cost of moving people to the bases could be higher than housing them in hotels.
Asked about whether it would cost more, he told ITV’s Good Morning Britain that “the public want to see those hotels close”.
“We’re looking at what’s possible and, in some cases, those bases may be a different cost to hotels, but I think we need to reflect the public mood on this. Asylum hotels need to close,” he said.
