Labour minister reveals bonkers plan to put asylum seekers in student halls

The Home Office is planning to put asylum seekers in student accommodation as it scrambles to respond to local councils demanding the closure of asylum hotels. Housing minister Matthew Pennycook revealed the plan as he warned thousands of asylum seekers could be left to sleep rough on the streets of Britain.

There are 32,345 asylum seekers in UK hotels according to the latest figures, but Mr Pennycook said closing hotels in an “unplanned” way could mean “many, many large numbers of them on our streets”. It comes after the High Court granted Epping Forest District Council a temporary injunction to remove asylum seekers from the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex, from September 12. Regular protests had been held outside the hotel after an asylum seeker was charged with trying to kiss a 14-year-old girl, which he denies.

The Government is to appeal against the ruling but other local authorities are expected to launch legal battles of their own.

Mr Pennycook said the government will need to find “alternative contingency accommodation” if more hotels expel asylum seekers, such as student halls.

And he told Times Radio: “If we have an unplanned discharge of asylum seekers awaiting their claims being processed from hotels that will put significant pressure on the government to have to look at alternative contingency accommodation, for example large-scale sites that can be repurposed military barracks.

“But this is where I want to be very clear and I don’t want to go too much into what are still obviously live legal proceedings. but it is an interim ruling that the court has not made a final ruling as to whether a material change of use has taken place in the case of the Bell Hotel in Epping and that’s part of why the government thinks it needs to intervene and challenge the ruling.

“As I say we’ve got to have a reduction in hotel use in a managed order way because if we don’t we’ll either be forced to put asylum seekers waiting for their claims to be processed in alternative contingency accommodation we’re trying to find as much of that as we can or in dispersal accommodation in communities across the country and the very worst scenario where we have an unplanned disordered haphazard ejection of asylum seekers for hotels is they will see many, many large numbers of them on our streets putting significant pressures on local councils through their homelessness duties.”

The Government is preparing to return the first small boat arrivals to France under its one in, one out deal with the country.

More than 100 migrants in detention, including some arrested over the weekend, could be among the first to be sent back to France under the scheme.

A record 28,288 people have crossed the English Channel in small boats this year so far, after 212 people did so on Sunday in four boats, making the total 46% more than by the same date in 2024.

Further boats were seen embarking on the dangerous journey on Monday, though the official number of those who made the crossing has not yet been published.

Sir Keir Starmer is facing growing pressure from senior Labour figures and his own supporters, who feel the Government’s attempts to tackle the migrant crisis have so far failed.

YouGov polling released over the weekend found that 71% of voters believe the Prime Minister is handling the asylum hotel issue badly, including 56% of Labour supporters.