Taxpayers have forked out almost £700,000 to maintain an unused and derelict asylum seeker accommodation in East Sussex, according to reports. The site, in Northeye, Bexhill-on-Sea, was bought by the Home Office in September 2023 for £15.4 million after previously serving as an RAF base and then a prison from 1969 to 1992. It was purchased by the former Conservative Government in a bid to take pressure off migrant hotels by providing 1,400 beds in a mix of new and refurbished buildings.
However, the site has sat empty since it was acquired, racking up over £660,000 in security, maintenance and utility costs and business rates, according to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request by The i Paper. A report by the National Audit Office (NAO) last year found that the Home Office had “cut corners” and “made poor decisions” in buying the accommodation, for which it paid more than double what it had cost the seller the year before.
The NAO report suggested that the Home Office had moved forward with the purchase despite the identification of contamination risks from materials containing asbestos and building repairs totalling up to £20 million, more than the buying price.
The cross-party Public Accounts Committee (PAC) also suggested earlier this year that the Government “repeatedly emphasised that it was working at pace to reduce its reliance on costly hotel accommodation for asylum seekers, but this does not excuse it from its responsibility to safeguard taxpayers’ money”.
A report released in February continued: “As we have previously found, in some cases these programmes have cost more than the alternative of using hotels.”
The current Home Office is reportedly negotiating with Homes England about turning the Northeye site into a housing development, with another FOI request revealing that £41,400 has been spent on “technical due diligence”.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, Tory MP and chair of the PAC, told The i: “The continuing burden on the public finances that the Northeye site represents is an inevitable consequence of the Home Office’s failure to do full due diligence before purchasing the site in the first place.
“What the Home Office is now appearing to do within government is to be creating one financial loss after another. It is essential that this process be concluded as soon as possible instead of costing the taxpayer even more money.”
Nicola David, of the refugee support group One Life to Live added that the Home Office had a “history of wasting taxpayer money by attempting to contain asylum seekers at totally inappropriate sites – sites which, unsurprisingly, never come to fruition or rapidly shut down.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “This Government inherited an asylum system under exceptional strain. As part of our commitment to close all asylum hotels, we are looking at a range of more appropriate sites including disused accommodation, industrial and ex-military sites so we can reduce the impact on communities.
“Since taking office, we’ve doubled asylum decisions, reduced the backlog by 24%, returned 35,000 people with no right to be here and cut hotel spending by over half a billion pounds.”