LONDON: British Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick has said the government will stop using 50 hotels to host asylum seekers by January, British media reported on Tuesday.
The UK authorities currently use about 400 hotels to give accommodation for unprecedented numbers of migrants in the country.
Jenrick said that agreements with hotels in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will be terminated. He said his plans to reduce the number of asylum claims was starting to work.
Hotel contracts cost taxpayers £8 million a day
The official added that the hotel contracts cost taxpayers £8 million ($9.7 million) a day which is unacceptable.
Stephen Kinnock, the opposition Labour Party’s shadow immigration minister, condemned Jenrick for the announcement, saying that it only applies to 12 percent of the total number of hotels being used for asylum seekers.
The Home Office is bound to provide accommodation to migrants whose applications for asylum are under process.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in December 2022, announced his plans to tackle a backlog of unprocessed applications registered before June 2022, by the end of this year.
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The government subsequently has doubled the number of officers processing asylum applications to 2,500, however, the Labour has called for the hiring of 1,000 additional staff to handle the backlog.
Peter Walsh, a researcher at Oxford University’s Migration Observatory, told the media that while the backlog has been brought down, the progress was offset by an influx of new applications.
He added that he is concerned about alternative housing plans for asylum seekers noting that the total backlog of cases is almost stagnant since 2022.
The British Home Office this year launched Project Maximise, to reduce the cost of hotel accommodation for asylum seekers.
