The locations of two new military sites which Labour will use to house 900 migrant men have been revealed.
The Cameron Barracks in Inverness and the Crowborough army training camp in East Sussex are at the centre of talks on where to house the male asylum seekers as the government seeks to end the use of hotels.
Sir Keir Starmer ordered the Home Office and Ministry of Defence (MoD) officials to expedite work to locate appropriate military sites, it is understood.
It came after Labour’s pledge to end the use of hotels to accommodate migrants by the next election, in a bid to save millions of pounds and control anti-migrant protests.
Around 32,000 asylum seekers are currently being housed in hotels, an increase of 2,500 since last year.
Other locations under consideration include industrial sites, temporary accommodation and currently disused accommodation.
A Home Office spokesperson told The Times: ’We are furious at the level of illegal migrants and asylum hotels.
‘This government will close every asylum hotel. Work is well underway, with more suitable sites being brought forward to ease pressure on communities and cut asylum costs.’
Yesterday, a damning report found the Home Office has ‘squandered’ billions of pounds on asylum hotels.
MPs blasted the department’s ‘incompetence’ over its handling of a ‘failed, chaotic and expensive’ system.
There was ‘manifest failure’ by the Home Office to ‘get a grip’ of contracts with private companies it appointed to house asylum seekers, they concluded.
As a result, the firms had been allowed make ‘excessive profits’ from the Channel crisis.
In one of the most damning reports ever published into the dysfunctional department, the MPs said the Home Office was ‘not up to this challenge’ and demanded a series of major changes.
The Commons’ home affairs select committee said it was ‘inexplicable’ the Home Office did not require accommodation providers to assess the impact on local areas before opening migrant hotels.
It had led to ‘some local services experiencing unsustainable pressures’, damaging community cohesion and allowing ‘misinformation and mistrust to grow’.
Committee chair Dame Karen Bradley MP said: ‘The Home Office has presided over a failing asylum accommodation system that has cost taxpayers billions of pounds.
‘Its response to increasing demand has been rushed and chaotic, and the department has neglected the day-to-day management of these contracts.
‘The Government needs to get a grip on the asylum accommodation system in order to bring costs down and hold providers to account for poor performance.
‘Urgent action is needed to lower the cost of asylum accommodation and address the concerns of local communities.’
She added: ‘There is now an opportunity to draw a line under the current failed, chaotic and expensive system, but the Home Office must finally learn from its previous mistakes or it is doomed to repeat them.’
