Brits offered money to house Channel migrants amid record numbers and soaring hotel bills
27 October 2022, 11:14 | Updated: 27 October 2022, 13:51
Homeowners are being offered contracts to take in Channel migrants as the government struggles with record numbers arriving on Britain's shores.
The UK is now spending around £2.4 billion a year on hotel bills while asylum applications and processed, and with more than 38,000 arriving so far this year, rooms are running out.
Now private contractor Serco is offering people contracts of up to five years to take migrants in themselves to deal with the numbers, the Sun reports.
The offers will guarantee rent in full every month, and will also cover maintenance costs, council tax and gas and electricity bills.
It comes as Home Office officials said that among the arrivals were 10,000 Albanians, leading to fear about the dominance of organised crime in the crossings.
Criminal gangs of Albanians are said to be getting a foothold in northern France, and putting their countrymen in touch with Albanian gangs in the UK, where they dominate the drugs trade, human trafficking, weapons and prostitution, said Dan O’Mahoney, Border Force’s clandestine Channel threat commander.
Serco, which was awarded a £1.9 billion contract by the Home Office for 10 years in 2019, is currently housing at least 30,000 asylum seekers in 6,000 homes.
It is expected to make £150,000 from the scheme and has issued a fresh call, saying it will consider all types of properties in the North West, Midlands and East of England.
However owners of empty properties, second homes, care homes and former student homes are among those being sought after in particular.
Natalie Elphicke, Tory MP for Dover and Deal, said people crossing the Channel in small boats are "making it much harder for Brits already struggling to keep a roof over their head or get a home of their own".
But housing charities have said the cause of the problem is decades of underinvestment in social housing, rather than migrants.
New figures show the Home Office processed just 4% only asylum claims by migrants who crossed the English Channel last year, exposing a huge backlog in the system.
Out of those, 85% had been granted refugee status or similar, Border Force clandestine threat commander Dan O'Mahoney told the Home Affairs Select Committee on Wednesday.
The committee heard how the nationality of people crossing the Channel is changing, and that Albanians are now the biggest group.
Only 50 Albanians arrived in small boats in 2020, but that number to to 800 last year and already stands at 12,000 this year, 10,000 of whom are men - representing 1% of Albania's adult male population.
"The rise has been exponential and we think that is, in the main, due to the fact that Albanian criminal gangs have gained a foothold in the north of France and they've begun facilitating very large numbers of migrants," said Mr O'Mahoney.
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He also told MPs that the interception rate by French authorities fell from 50% in 2021 to 42.5% this year, with 28,000 migrants stopped in France's side of the Channel so far in 2022.
The Nationality and Borders Bill 2022 makes it illegal for people to cross the Channel in dinghies, with the aim of breaking the business model of exploitative human traffickers.
But charities and campaigners say criminalising asylum seekers based on their mode of arrival betrays the very principle of asylum, and undermines established international standards for protecting refugees.
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Home Secretary Suella Braverman wants to use the bill to prosecute more migrants arriving in small boats in Kent and is trying to revive a stalled scheme to deport them to Rwanda.
A Home Office spokesman said: “The number of people arriving in the UK who require accommodation has reached record levels and has put our asylum system under extreme pressure.
“As a result of this incredible strain, there are currently more than 33,000 asylum-seekers in hotels costing the UK taxpayer more than £5million a day.
"This is unacceptable and we are working hard with local authorities to find safe, permanent accommodation.”
