Taxpayers have been charged £700,000 to maintain a derelict asylum site that has never been used by the Home Office, The i Paper can reveal.
The Northeye site, in Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, was bought under the previous Conservative government for £15.4m in September 2023 – more than double what the seller paid for it the year before.
The Home Office bought Northeye with the aim of providing around 1,400 bed spaces through a mix of refurbished and new buildings and reduce its reliance on asylum hotels.
Since the Home Office purchased the site, it has incurred more than £660,000 in maintenance, utility and security costs, as well as business rates, according to figures obtained by The i Paper through freedom of information (FoI) requests.
A report by the National Audit Office (NAO) last year, found the Home Office “cut corners” and “made poor decisions” during the purchase of the site, which was formerly HMP Northeye.
The NAO said the Home Office went ahead with the purchase despite identifying a contamination risk from asbestos-containing materials at the site, as well as costs to repair buildings of up to £20m – more than the site’s purchase price.
In February 2025, the cross-party Public Accounts Committee (PAC) also released a report saying the Home Office “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”.
“As we have previously found, in some cases these programmes have cost more than the alternative of using hotels,” the committee added.
The former site of HMP Northeye, near Bexhill, in southern England, is set to be turned into a housing development (Photo: Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty) The Home Office bought Northeye with the aim of providing around 1,400 bed spaces through a mix of refurbished and new buildings and reduce its reliance on asylum hotels (Photo: Dan Kitwood/Getty)The Home Office said it was currently in the process of negotiating an arrangement with Homes England to turn the Northeye site into a housing development.
Responding to a separate FoI request, Homes England said it has spent £41,400 on “technical due diligence”, including ecology, access and transport surveys, as well as £5,000 on “valuation services”.
Commenting on The i Paper‘s findings, PAC chair Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said: “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.”
The Conservative MP added: “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 ever more money.”
Clifton-Brown urged the Home Office to make “full and open disclosure to any government agency thinking of taking on this site so they can make a value for money assessment around remediation on the basis of full information, including that of contamination onsite”.
The Northeye site was bought under the previous Conservative government for £15.4m in September 2023 – more than double what the seller paid for it the year before (Photo: Dan Kitwood/Getty)A Home Office spokesperson said the Government “inherited an asylum system under exceptional strain”, adding that it is looking for “more appropriate sites including disused accommodation, industrial and ex-military sites so we can reduce the impact on communities”.
Nicola David of One Life To Live, which campaigns against inappropriate accommodation for asylum seekers, said the Home Office has a “history of wasting taxpayer money by attempting to contain asylum seekers at totally unsuitable sites – sites which, unsurprisingly, never come to fruition or rapidly shut down”.
She pointed to the second example of RAF Linton-on-Ouse, where £2.9m of taxpayers’ cash was spent on a cancelled asylum accommodation site.
In the case of Northeye, Ms David said “it must be asked why the Government bought the site outright, for millions, when it would need flattening and redeveloping.
“This is not a fast or cost-effective solution, particularly as the Government sits on so much existing land with accommodation already in place. So what was the rationale?”
In May, Labour unveiled sweeping plans to reduce migration to the UK in its Immigration White Paper.
Hailed as a “clean break from the past”, the White Paper laid out plans to introduce stricter rules on the qualifications people need to get a skilled worker visa, an end to overseas recruitment for social care work and obligatory English language tests for students and workers arriving the UK.
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Labour has also prioritised reducing the number of small boats crossing the English Channel as part of its crackdown on immigration. In the year to June 2025, 43,309 people were recorded as arriving in the UK on small boats, marking a 38 per cent increase when compared to the previous 12 months.
The surge in arrivals has sparked backlash from communities where asylum sites are based and increased pressure on the Government to tackle the crossings, even though they account for just 4 per cent of total immigration to the UK for the year to June 2025.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves has also vowed to end the use of hotels housing asylum seekers by 2029 saving £1bn a year.
France and the UK have agreed on a “one in, one out” returns deal, designed to deter migrants from crossing the Channel. The scheme allows the UK to detain adult migrants upon arrival and send them back to France if their asylum claims are deemed inadmissible.
In return, France will transfer an equal number of individuals with legitimate asylum claims (those with family links to the UK or who come from the most vulnerable countries will be prioritised) who have not tried to cross illegally, and who meet strict eligibility and security checks.
Net migration to the UK – total permanent arrivals minus total permanent departures – dropped to 431,000 in 2024, down from 685,000 in 2023.
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 per cent, returned 35,000 people with no right to be here and cut hotel spending by over half a billion pounds.”
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