Priti Patel is planning a network of reception centres to house 8,000 migrants, according to new tender documents.
Companies are being invited to bid to create bespoke centres as part of the Home Secretary’s New Immigration Plan to reform the “broken” asylum system and deter illegal migration.
They are designed to replace the ad hoc temporary housing of migrants in hotels, hostels and other home office or local authority accommodation.
Up to 10,000 asylum seekers have been kept in hotels in the past year because of an increase in claims fuelled by migrant Channel crossings.
Nearly 11,000 have reached UK shores across the straits of Dover already this year, against 8,700 in the whole of 2020.
Chris Philp, the immigration minister, said: “The New Plan for Immigration is the only credible long-term plan to fix the broken asylum system and bring the exploitation by people smugglers to an end.
“We will end the use of hotels for new arrivals who enter the UK illegally. We plan to introduce new centres to provide basic accommodation for those who can’t be returned to a safe country.”
The proposal is more ambitious than a similar plan for centres to house 3,000 asylum seekers which was drawn up by David Blunkett in 2001. It collapsed after local communities objected in areas including Worcestershire, Hampshire, Nottinghamshire and Oxfordshire.
The tender document, revealed in a BBC blog, lists all nine regions of England as potential sites for the reception centres with none in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.
The North East - including key “red wall” territory for the Tories - is top of the list but the Home Office insisted this was purely a result of its alphabetical coding as a region.
Asylum seekers will be allocated to the dedicated asylum centres in order to cut costs, simplify the application process for the Government and provide a less appealing draw for migrants.
Ms Patel, pictured above, visited Greece earlier this month to see a similar immigration centre being built on one of the country’s islands.
She also investigated Greece’s controversial “pushback” tactics in the Aegean where migrants trying to reach its shores are turned back at sea and returned to Turkey. The UK is seeking a similar agreement with France.
The document says the department is looking for a “commercial partner(s)” for its asylum accommodation and reception centres, making clear that it wants them to be delivered in “swift” time. The contract notice will be published on October 1.
As for the fabric of the buildings, it says they could be “new build” sites using modular, modern or traditional construction methods, or involve the renovation of pre-existing infrastructure.
The document says the Home Office also wants to contract out transport, facilities management, security, catering and “wraparound services”, such as safeguarding, education and healthcare.
It suggests hotel accommodation may still be given approval, despite the Home Office pledge to stop it being used.
Landlords, hoteliers and other accommodation providers are being invited to facilitate “new solutions”.