The Home Office has issued an urgent appeal for 5,000 properties to house up to 20,000 migrants amid an accommodation crisis caused by a landmark High Court ruling.
Asylum accommodation contractors working for the Home Office “reached out” to property specialists earlier in August, seeking 5,000 residential units. Insiders suggested each flat would have two bedrooms on average, with space to house four migrants.
The move emerged on Wednesday, a day after Epping Forest district council was granted a temporary injunction by the High Court to shut down the Bell Hotel in Essex over alleged planning breaches after it became a focus for anti-immigration protests.
The hunt for alternative accommodation is part of Labour’s pledge to end the use of hotels for asylum seekers by the close of this Parliament in 2029.
However, some 200 hotels are still being used by the Home Office to house more than 32,000 asylum seekers, a similar number to summer 2024 – after Labour was forced to find accommodation for the record 27,997 migrants to have crossed the Channel so far in 2025.
The Epping council ruling threatens to spark similar legal challenges by other councils seeking to shut asylum hotels in their areas. Two dozen have already signalled that they will consider following suit which, if successful, could worsen the asylum accommodation crisis.
Ministers are seeking to partner councils to buy, lease or rent houses and vacant properties in which to place asylum seekers as an alternative to hotels. Officials are also targeting disused tower blocks, student accommodation and old teacher-training colleges for use as “medium-sized” accommodation sites.
The new appeal is understood to have been seeking shorter-term leases or rents, where migrants would be accommodated for 90 days with an additional 30 days’ notice.
Similar “contingency” accommodation has also been commissioned at the former Wethersfield RAF base near Braintree, Essex, where the Home Office has raised the cap of 800 migrants to allow 1,225 to live on the site.
Residents were told at a meeting on Tuesday that the numbers had already risen to 890, with two intakes of 50 more asylum seekers scheduled every week.
Wethersfield is the only “large” site that Labour inherited from the Tories and kept open, despite Sir Keir Starmer saying before the election that it “needs to close”.
The two other major sites identified by the Tories – the Bibby Stockholm barge and RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire – have both been abandoned by Labour.
On Wednesday, Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, called on the Government to guarantee that none of the asylum seekers removed from the Bell Hotel would be transferred to hotels or any other accommodation “much needed for British people”.
He also urged Sir Keir to call an emergency Cabinet meeting to draw up plans to deport all illegal migrants on arrival.
“The previous government established alternative accommodation on current or former military sites and an accommodation barge, which are all alternative options while deportation plans are put in place,” he said.
Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, has launched the campaign Lawyers for Borders, which has already attracted top-flight barristers to advise councils on legal challenges to close asylum hotels.
“Every patriotic council, whether Conservative, Reform, whatever, should follow Epping’s lead and seek an injunction. And if you are a council or a community group and you need our help, contact my office. If you’re a lawyer and you want to join the fight, contact me,” he said in a video on X.
“Let’s create a new movement, Lawyers for Borders… We need to put as much pressure as possible on Keir Starmer to change the law, to deport every single illegal migrant who’s here, and to close all the hotels.”
A Home Office spokesman said: “This Government has consistently said the use of hotels to house asylum seekers is neither sustainable nor suitable as a long-term approach.
“We remain committed to working with our partners to identify more suitable and cost-effective alternatives.”
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