Lucy Gilder
BBC Verify journalist

Image source, Getty Images

Armed Forces Minister Luke Pollard was asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning about the UK government potentially moving asylum seekers out of hotels and into former UK military bases.

He said: “We’re looking at all the military sites that the MoD [Ministry of Defence] has – some of those have been visited by the Home Office in the past.”

Here’s what we know about the military sites currently being used to accommodate asylum seekers.

Wethersfield in Essex was opened for this purpose in 2023 under the previous Conservative government.It can accommodate up to 1,245 people and is expected to cost £339m in total between 2023 and 2027.

The site is projected to cost £500,000 less than hotels over this period, according to a National Audit Office (NAO) report published last year., external

This is a significantly smaller saving than an earlier Home Office assessment, which initially estimated that the site would cost £66m less than hotels.

One reason for this is that the estimated costs of converting Wethersfield into asylum accommodation have increased nearly ten-fold from £5m to £49m.

Another is that fewer people have been accommodated at the site than expected.

A smaller military site called Napier Barracks, near Folkestone in Kent, opened under the Conservatives in 2020 and can hold up to 328 people.

There is limited publicly available information about its costs.

In its report, the NAO found that the Home Office had also incurred substantial costs setting up military sites which were never used.

For example, under the last government nearly £3m was spent preparing the former RAF base at Linton-on-Ouse in North Yorkshire to accommodate asylum seekers.

But these plans were ultimately scrapped because of local opposition.