Asylum accommodation centres on ex-military bases are now cheaper than migrant hotels, it has emerged, vindicating the Tory government’s decision to set them up.
The cost of running the large-scale centres – Wethersfield in Essex and Napier Barracks in Kent – has fallen below the bill of £145 per person per night faced by the taxpayer for hotels.
Napier Barracks now costs £108.58 per person per night, while Wethersfield costs £132, new data from the Home Office shows.
Labour previously scrapped plans set in motion by the Conservatives to open a third large-scale migrant, citing ‘unacceptable cost’, as well as ending use of an accommodation barge which was berthed at Portland in Dorset.
But the Home Office is in the process of resurrecting large sites, utilising Crown land such as ex-MoD bases.
The latest costs data provides further evidence that Labour was too hasty to abandon the previous government’s proposals.
The figures contrast with a report by the National Audit Office in March 2024 which concluded the large sites were more expensive than hotels, mainly due to set-up costs.
However, the bases are still more expensive than placing asylum seekers in self-catered flats or houses, which cost the Home Office £23.25 per person per night, on average.
Migrants cross the Channel by small boat – heading for Britain – at the end of last month
It comes after a Commons committee found private companies which hold the contracts for providing asylum accommodation ‘can reap greater profits by prioritising the use of hotels over procuring other, more suitable forms of accommodation’.
The Daily Mail reported today how the three companies – Serco, Clearsprings and Mears – had ‘no incentive, and a great disincentive, in moving asylum seekers out of expensive hotel accommodation’.
The Home Office has ‘squandered’ billions of pounds on asylum hotels, a damning report has found (Pictured: A protest defending migrants at the Thistle City Barbican Hotel in London, August 2025)
The department has come under fire over its handling of migrant hotels by MPs (Pictured: Protestors at the Bell Hotel in Epping in August 2025)
A damning report by the home affairs select committee said the Home Office had ‘squandered’ billions of pounds on asylum hotels.
And MPs blasted the department’s ‘incompetence’ over its handling of a ‘failed, chaotic and expensive’ system.
In June Labour announced the capacity of the Wethersfield centre, near Braintree, will be increased by 445 from the current limit of 800 to 1,225.
Committee chair Dame Karen Bradley MP said the Home Office has ‘presided over a failing asylum accommodation’ (Pictured: Police outside the Bell Hotel in August 2025)
The move came despite Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer saying just before the election that Wethersfield ‘needs to close’.
In a letter to the cross-party committee, asylum minister Alex Norris said running costs at Wethersfield costs ‘are high in part due to significant transport costs taking service users to and from local towns given the remoteness of the site and security costs given the size of the site’.
The former Dambusters airbase at RAF Scampton, Lincs, is once again being considered as a location to house migrants
He added that the shuttle bus service runs seven days a week, 365 days of the year.
There are three bus journeys a day to Braintree, Chelmsford and Colchester, he added.
In September Labour revealed it was poised to revive plans to house migrants on ex-military bases less than a year after they were abandoned on cost grounds.
Defence minister Luke Pollard confirmed it could include using the previously-scrapped scheme to accommodate migrants at the historic Dambusters base at RAF Scampton.
Under the Conservative government almost £50million was spent on plans to turn the Lincolnshire site into an asylum camp.
But Labour canned the project in September 2024 saying that it would not provide ‘value for money’.
Mr Pollard said MoD military planners were now reviewing all sites including Scampton as part of a new government push to close down migrant hotels.
‘We’re looking at all of them again at the moment,’ he said at the time.
‘The PM wants all asylum hotels closed, as do I, as does the British public.
‘And by standing up temporary accommodation on those sites, we can support the closure of those asylum hotels even faster.’
The former home of the Dambusters squadron had originally been slated to house 2,000 migrants, later reduced to 800.
Labour discontinued the plans citing ‘unacceptable cost’.
It also ended the use of a floating accommodation barge, the Bibby Stockholm, which had been berthed at Portland in Dorset, under Tory initiatives to close migrant hotels.
The RAF’s 617 Squadron was formed at Scampton in 1943 and from there its Lancaster bombers launched daring raids on dams in Germany’s Ruhr region, using the ‘bouncing bomb’ developed by Sir Barnes Wallis.
Today’s Commons report into asylum accommodation was one of the most damning ever published into the dysfunctional department.
There was ‘manifest failure’ by the Home Office to ‘get a grip’ of contracts with private companies it appointed to house asylum seekers, it concluded.
As a result, the firms had been allowed make ‘excessive profits’ from the Channel crisis.
MPs said the Home Office was ‘not up to this challenge’ and demanded a series of major changes.
They added that it was ‘inexplicable’ the Home Office did not require accommodation providers to assess the impact on local areas before opening migrant hotels.
It had led to ‘some local services experiencing unsustainable pressures’, damaging community cohesion and allowing ‘misinformation and mistrust to grow’.
Committee chair Dame Karen Bradley MP said: ‘The Home Office has presided over a failing asylum accommodation system that has cost taxpayers billions of pounds.’
