Number of migrants in hotels hits 40,000

The number of migrants housed in hotels has hit 40,000 after the Home Office emptied the Manston processing centre, it has been revealed. 

Sources said there were now a record number of migrants - most of whom arrived by small boat across the Channel - in hotel accommodation.

There were 37,000 migrants in hotels at a cost of £5.6million a day at the beginning of this month, when a processing backlog had also led to around 4,000 being held at Manston, in Kent.

Amid concerns over conditions at the site, the Home Office stepped up moves to transfer migrants from the former RAF station.

At least 3,000 extra hotel places have now been block-booked by the Home Office to house the transferred migrants.

The cost of the asylum system has soared to £2.1billion a year - from £500million a decade ago - mainly due to the cost of providing taxpayer-funded support for those arriving in the UK.

Migrants are being placed in hotels due to a huge shortage of more economical options such as self-catering flats and social housing.

Earlier this month it emerged that foreign nurses studying for their UK qualifications are to be forced out of their hotel accommodation to make way for asylum seekers.

The nurses, hired by York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to help ease staffing pressures, were given less than a month to move out of their rooms by the Home Office.

It came after RNLI volunteers, training to save people from the seas, had to leave a hotel on the Wirral part-way through their stay to make way for asylum seekers.