No 10 claims restoring 'public confidence' worth extra cost of housing refugees in barracks

Downing Street has defended the prospect of paying more to house asylum seekers in disused military barracks instead of hotels, arguing that quelling public disquiet is worth any extra cost.

- Rajeev Syal Aletha Adu Libby Brooks

As refugee organisations and politicians described plans to house tens of thousands of claimants in ex-military sites as "fanciful" and "too expensive", No 10 said: "Communities don't want asylum seekers housed in hotels, and neither does the government."

The comments followed the Home Office's confirmation yesterday that from next month it plans to use Cameron barracks in Inverness and Crowborough training camp in East Sussex to house 900 male asylum seekers.

Officials say they will be the first of as many as 10,000 people the Home Office is hoping to house on former military sites as it works with the Ministry of Defence to find several more disused buildings.

There were protests over the use of hotels for housing asylum seekers across England including in Bristol, Liverpool and London this summer, as well as in Mold in north Wales, Perth in Scotland and County Antrim in Northern Ireland.

Downing Street indicated that some higher costs of moving asylum seekers from hotels into military sites would be worthwhile because the issue of where asylum seekers were housed had become "an issue of public confidence".