Government to buy empty homes to house asylum seekers

The UK government has a strategy to address the growing challenge of housing asylum seekers by acquiring empty homes and repurposing properties through partnerships with local councils, the Daily Telegraph reports.

It says the initiative aims to reduce the dependence on hotels, which have been a contentious and expensive solution for accommodating migrants.

Under the proposed plan, councils across the country will work with the Home Office to purchase or lease vacant homes, former tower blocks, student residences and old teacher training colleges.

These properties will be transformed into ‘medium-sized’ sites to accommodate dozens of asylum seekers.

Government pilot schemes

The newspaper also reports that the government is exploring pilot schemes where councils could receive funding to buy or refurbish properties, which would then be leased back to the Home Office for migrant housing.

Government figures reveal that England has approximately 700,000 empty homes, with significant numbers in major cities like London (93,600), Birmingham (13,162), Leeds (12,334) and Liverpool (10,779).

The plan includes bringing some of these properties back into use, not only for asylum seekers but also for local homeless individuals, creating a dual-purpose housing solution.

Asylum seeker housing bill

Currently, around 32,000 asylum seekers are housed in 210 hotels, a reduction from the peak of 56,000 across 400 hotels in September 2023, which cost taxpayers £9 million daily.

However, the numbers have risen slightly since June last year, when 30,000 migrants were in hotels, just before Labour’s election victory.

To enforce the transition, the Home Office has introduced a ‘firm-but-fair’ policy, warning asylum seekers that they risk losing their taxpayer-funded accommodation and £49.18 weekly allowance if they refuse to relocate from hotels to alternative housing for a second time.

This follows reports of hundreds of migrants resisting transfers weekly, sometimes leaving hotels in use for as few as three occupants.

Identifying homes to use

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer last week told a government committee: “A central focus of what we are doing is what can be built, arranged or taken by councils and repurposed.

“I am impatient for this change to be driven through.

“We have to take over other accommodation, and we have to drive down the asylum lists.

“There is no alternative… There is lots of housing in many local authorities that can be used, and we are identifying where it can be used.”

Grants for void properties

Joanna Rowland, the Home Office’s director general for customer services, told the committee: “The pilots are looking at various ways to provide accommodation, for example, putting a grant to local authorities and leasing back the property.

“There are elements of: could we give grants to remediate void properties?

“Is there a support-only option, so we are not providing accommodation?

“There are a lot of ideas, but we will need those pilots to give us an evidence base for how we might want to move forward.”

Seize empty properties

Housing and communities Secretary Angela Rayner is also pushing for councils to gain powers to seize properties left vacant for more than six months.

That’s a big reduction from the current two-year threshold, though her department dismissed suggestions that these powers would specifically target asylum housing as ‘pure speculation’.

With a record 24,000 migrants crossing the Channel this year and a backlog of 80,000 initial asylum claims plus 41,000 appeals from failed asylum seekers, the government is under pressure to find sustainable solutions.

The Home Office told the Telegraph that its goal is to ‘develop a more sustainable, long-term model of accommodation supply, which may be more locally led, should reduce competition for affordable housing, and help deliver new supply.’