The British government has issued an urgent appeal for 5,000 properties to house 20,000 migrants.
The home office has turned to property specialists as councils prepare to follow Epping in an attempt to stop hotels housing the so called asylum seekers following a landmark ruling by the high court.
Insiders have said each flat would likely have two bedrooms on average and that would be enough space to house four migrants.
The Telegraph reports: The hunt for alternative accommodation is part of Labour’s pledge to end the use of hotels for asylum seekers by the close of this Parliament in 2029.
However, some 200 hotels are still being used by the Home Office to house more than 32,000 asylum seekers, a similar number to summer 2024 – after Labour was forced to find accommodation for the record 27,997 migrants who have crossed the Channel so far in 2025.
The Epping council ruling threatens to cause similar legal challenges by other councils seeking to shut asylum hotels in their areas. Two dozen have already signalled that they would consider following suit which, if successful, could worsen the asylum accommodation crisis.
Ministers are seeking to partner councils to buy, lease or rent houses and vacant properties in which to place asylum seekers as an alternative to hotels. Officials are also targeting disused tower blocks, student accommodation and old teacher-training colleges for use as “medium-sized” accommodation sites.
The new appeal is understood to have been seeking shorter-term leases or rents, where migrants would be accommodated for 90 days with an additional 30 days’ notice.
Similar “contingency” accommodation has also been commissioned at the former Wethersfield RAF base near Braintree, Essex, where the Home Office has raised the cap of 800 migrants to allow 1,225 to live on the site.
Residents were told at a meeting on Tuesday that the numbers had already risen to 890, with two intakes of 50 asylum seekers scheduled every week.
Wethersfield is the only “large” site that Labour inherited from the Tories and kept open, despite Sir Keir Starmer saying before the election that it “needs to close”.
Labour have abandoned the two other major sites identified by the Tories, the Bibby Stockholm barge and RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire.
On Wednesday, Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, called on the Government to guarantee that none of the asylum seekers removed from the Bell Hotel would be transferred to hotels or any other accommodation “much needed for British people”.