MIGRANTS COULD BE MOVED FROM HOTELS TO WAREHOUSES-Says Home Secretary Yvette Cooper 

Asylum seekers could be housed in warehouses under plans to reduce the number of migrant hotels, Yvette Cooper has said.

The Home Secretary said the Government was looking at industrial and military sites as a potential way to end the use of asylum seeker hotels. Pressed on an example of an industrial site, Ms Cooper said that warehouses were “one of the things being looked at”.

The disclosure came as Ms Cooper backed Sir Keir Starmer’s pledge on Monday to speed up the decommissioning of asylum hotels so as to scrap their use before the current target date of the end of the Parliament in 2029.

There were 32,059 asylum seekers in more than 200 hotels at the end of June, up 8 per cent from 29,585 at the same point a year earlier but down on the 32,345 figure at the end of March. They cost taxpayers £5.77m per day in 2024/25, down from £8.3m per day in 2023/24.

She said the Home Office was in talks with councils to identify sites which also include former student accommodation, government-owned properties, disused tower and office blocks and ex-teacher training colleges.