The Home Office signed off as a “constructive loss” £48.5 million after abandoning proposals to convert a former Ministry of Defence facility into asylum accommodation. Labour ministers terminated the RAF Scampton scheme in September after expenses spiralled and a Home Office assessment concluded it no longer offered taxpayer value. The department had originally projected that preparation and renovation expenses for the venture would total £5 million, but in May it admitted it would cost much more for the project to be followed through.
An evaluation of the proposals, released in September, revealed that launching the facility from autumn 2025 as intended would require an additional £122 million until its closure in 2027. As the plan had already cost £60 million, according to Home Office minister Dame Angela Eagle, this would have brought the overall expenditure to nearly £200 million. The Home Office’s 2024-25 annual report and accounts stated: “RAF Scampton, the former Ministry of Defence site in Lincolnshire, was planned to be used for asylum accommodation.
“Plans were axed as the assessment found the site was not value for money for the taxpayer. This has resulted in a constructive loss of £48.5 million.”
When announcing the site’s cancellation, Dame Angela, minister for border security and asylum, said accommodation like Sampton would not be necessary with “faster asylum processing, increased returns and tighter enforcement of immigration rules”.
She said the department had “listened to community feedback and concerns about using this site for asylum accommodation”.
In a Public Accounts Committee hearing last year, the department’s then-permanent secretary Sir Matthew Rycroft conceded that the department had “woefully” underestimated the setup cost and acknowledged a “very significant optimism bias”.
The 2024-25 accounts also revealed that the Home Office paid a total of £290 million to the Rwandan government for the Migration and Economic Development Partnership (MEDP), which aimed to relocate asylum seekers to the East African nation.
However, Labour scrapped the scheme in July 2024. The Home Office also made payments totalling £270 million intended to boost economic development in Rwanda.
Due to the cancellation of the MEDP, this expenditure is categorised as a “constructive loss”. The Rwandan government stated last year that it was “under no obligation” to refund the £270 million.
An additional one-off payment of £20 million, made in April 2022, to cover the advance operational costs of the MEDP was also classified as a “constructive loss” as the Home Office “derived no benefit from this payment”.
A Home Office spokesperson told The i Paper: “A review carried out in September 2024 determined that, due to decisions taken by the previous government, the costs associated with the Scampton site had surged well beyond initial estimates and no longer delivered value for money for taxpayers.
“The cost of exiting this site was minimal compared to the projected minimum £180 million required to keep it running until March 2027.”
The Express has contacted the Home Office for comment.