The Home Office is calling on landlords to house asylum seekers after a record number of migrants arrived in small boats this month.
Serco, one of the three private contractors working for the Home Office, has offered landlords five-year guaranteed full rent deals at the taxpayers’ expense if they agree to house asylum seekers, according to reports.
The number of migrants who arrived in the UK after crossing the English Channel in small boats reached a new record for the first four months of the year. Some 656 migrants arrived on 12 April, according to the Home Office’s provisional figures, taking the total number of people crossing in 2025 to 8,064.
The initiative is part of Labour’s pledge to crack down on people-smuggling gangs, after Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in March admitted that combating the small boats crisis had become “very challenging”.
Serco, in a website page titled “calling all landlords”, said it was responsible for more than 30,000 asylum seekers in an “ever growing” portfolio of some 7,000 properties.
“Our operating model is based on leasing properties from a wide network of landlords, investors and agents with Serco acting as a Tenant,” the website page states.
Landlords interested in the five-year lease have been invited to a Serco event at a hotel in Malvern Hills, Worcestershire, next month, The Daily Telegraph reported. They are reportedly seeking landlords with properties in the north west, the Midlands, and the east of England.
Serco said: “We are confident that our lease provision offers an attractive and competitive proposition within the industry.”
The firm is offering to pay rent “on time every month with no arrears”, as well as full repair and maintenance, free property management and utilities and council tax bills paid by Serco.
Housing migrants in private rented accommodation is dramatically cheaper than in hotel accommodation. The Institute for Public Policy Research think tank estimated a hotel stay costs the taxpayer £145 per night on average, compared to £14 for private rented accommodation.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer at the Organised Immigration Crime Summit at Lancaster House last month (Photo: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire)The latest Home Office data from December last year said there were some 38,000 asylum seekers staying in hotels, costing £5.5m a day. The figures were up from 29,585 last June.
Contractors, meanwhile, are currently responsible for housing 65,700 asylum seekers, more than double the 31,000 in 2014.
A Home Office spokesman said: “We have a statutory duty to support destitute asylum seekers who will not be able to pay for fees such as utilities and council tax.
“We are restoring order to the asylum system and cutting costs to taxpayers by reducing the number of people we are required to accommodate through a rapid increase in asylum decision-making and the removal of more than 24,000 people with no right to be in the UK.”
The problem facing Starmer
Starmer’s Government has been seeking to crack down on people-smuggling across the Channel since it came into office in July, but figures have continued to climb.
The Prime Minister has repeatedly said his Government would “smash the gangs” smuggling people across borders to travel to the UK, but has stopped short of setting any targets.
Unveiling six “milestones” for his Government in a speech in December last year, which did not feature immigration, Starmer said his Government would “reduce immigration – legal and illegal”.
But more arrivals have been recorded in January to April 2025 than in the equivalent four-month period in any year since data on Channel crossings began in 2018.
A group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover, Kent, onboard an RNLI Lifeboat following a small boat incident in the Channel, 15 April (Photo: Gareth Fuller/PA)The Government is reportedly seeking to send failed asylum seekers to overseas hubs in the Balkans, after shutting down the Conservatives’ plan to send migrants to Rwanda.
In a boost to Labour’s plans, the EU Commission earlier this year proposed allowing EU members to set up so-called “return hubs” abroad. Italy has already started sending migrants with no permission to remain in the country to Italian-run migration detention centres in Albania.
At a summit last month, Starmer said the UK was working “very closely” with Italian ministers to consider ways to process migrants with asylum claims in a third country.
He told reporters anything that will be looked at has got to be “consistent with international law” and “cost effective”.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper met the UN high commissioner for refugees, Filippo Grandi, last month, where the two discussed the prospect of paying countries in the Balkans to take Britain’s failed asylum seekers, The Times reported at the time.
Read Next
square IMMIGRATIONThe major hurdle that threatens 'one in, one out' deal to stop small boats
Read MoreThe United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) last week endorsed “return hubs” in a boost to the potential Government plans and set out how the hubs could work while meeting its legal standards.
The UNHCR said return hubs could “appropriately be explored” and that it could play a role in supporting countries to use them as long as it does not conflict with its mandate to protect refugees.
The agency recommended monitoring to make sure human rights standards are “reliably met” at any hubs.
The country hosting the return hub would need to grant temporary legal status for migrants and the sending country would need to support it to make sure there are “adequate accommodation and reception arrangements”, the refugee agency said.
It said there has been “increasing attention” on the concept of return hubs and the role they may play in supporting returns.
Serco and the Home Office has been approached for comment.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( ‘Calling all landlords’: The Home Office plan to rent homes for migrants )
Also on site :
- Lana Del Rey Sings About Kissing Morgan Wallen, Covers Tammy Wynette and John Denver, and Goes Swinging in Unpredictable Stagecoach Set
- DC vs RCB Live Streaming Free and Live Telecast - IPL 2025, Match 46
- Matt Maher: Champions League or FA Cup? Why not both?