Home Office drops plan for more barges
PLANS to secure more barges to accommodate asylum seekers have been quietly dropped by the Home Office.
Insiders said it was ‘not a priority’ to use more vessels.
It comes just weeks after it emerged the first barge -– the Bibby Stockholm, berthed at Portland in Dorset – is costing the taxpayer almost £22.5 million.
The vessel is housing more than 200 migrants and was the scene of a tragic suspected suicide by an asylum seeker in early December.
It remains unclear whether the Bibby Stockholm is providing cheaper accommodation than migrant hotels, which currently cost the taxpayer £8 million a day.
The Home Office had been planning to hire further vessels but had difficulty finding ports which were willing to berth them, the Sun newspaper reported.
‘ It’s not a priority any more. That’s not to say a port couldn’t turn around tomorrow and stick their hand up, but it’s not really front and centre,’ a source said.
The 506-bed Bibby Stockholm was forced to shut down just days after accepting its first migrants in August when legionella bacteria was discovered in its water system. It eventually reopened in October.
The vessel had previously been used to house offshore workers.
The Home Office is closing 100 hotels being used by asylum seekers by the end of March.
Among the first to close are luxury, country house-style premises as migrants are moved into cheaper options as part of a bid to cut costs. However, although the number of hotels being used by the Home Office is in decline the overall number of migrants being housed in them has risen to just over 56,000, according to latest figures.
Last year the Mail reported how migrants were housed at ‘Downton Abbey- style’ four- star Stoke Rochford Hall, near Grantham in Lincolnshire. It was previously advertised as a Victorian country mansion with landscaped gardens.
A Home Office spokesman said: ‘We continue to look at a range of alternative accommodation sites to house asylum seekers.’