The Public Accounts Committee, a cross-party committee, said the Government body ignored expert advice available at the time during its bid to buy former HMP Northeye, near Bexhill.
A new report into the Home Office has raised concerns over its ability to stop such an ‘unacceptable waste’ of public money from happening again.
The rusting exterior of the Northeye site (Image: Sussex News and Pictures) The previous Tory government acquired the HMP Northeye site near Bexhill for £15.4 million in a bid to accommodate asylum seekers.
The Public Accounts Committee found the Home Office “rushed” to spend public money to cut costs for supporting asylum seekers, but has “very little to show for its efforts”. The site was found to contain asbestos and was never used to house asylum seekers.
A Whitehall spending watchdog, the National Audit Office, also said the Home Office’s attempt to acquire the Northeye site in a few months led it to cut corners and a “series of poor decisions”.
The sale was completed in September 2023 under the previous government, paying more than double what had been paid for the site 12 months earlier.
The report also criticised the Home Office’s “dysfunctional culture” where value for money was “a secondary concern”, and branded it “unacceptable” to repeat the warning from its report last year.
Northeye in Bexhill (Image: Sussex News and Pictures) The publication from MPs released on Wednesday read: “The Home Office repeatedly emphasised that it was working at pace to reduce its reliance on costly hotel accommodation for asylum seekers, but this does not excuse it from its responsibility to safeguard taxpayers’ money.
“As we have previously found, in some cases these programmes have cost more than the alternative of using hotels.”
The report also cited the Northeye sale was among purchases of large accommodation sites for asylum seekers that have gone “drastically wrong” and come at a high cost to the taxpayer.
This also comes after it was reported on Monday that the Home Office has plans for an 125-bed asylum seeker accommodation site at the former Esperance Hospital building in Hartington Place, Eastbourne.
Councillor Robert Smart outside the former hospital in Eastbourne (Image: Councillor Robert Smart) Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, committee chairman, said: “Northeye was one of a series of failed Home Office acquisitions for large asylum accommodation sites, totalling a cost to the public purse of almost £100 million of taxpayers’ money.
“Treasury rules for safeguarding public money are there for a reason and should only be overridden in extreme circumstances. This case clearly demonstrates why those safeguards should normally be followed.
“The Home Office says it has learned the lessons from its disastrously managed acquisition of the Northeye site. These are lessons for which the taxpayer has paid a steep price.”
In December in a letter to Tory MP Kieran Mullan for Bexhill, Angela Eagle, a minister for border security and asylum, confirmed that the Labour government will be selling the Northeye site.
Dame Eagle wrote: “The purchase of the Northeye site was made under the previous Government. This Government inherited an asylum system under exceptional strain, with tens of thousands of cases stuck in a backlog.
“Further to our telephone call of December 6 regarding this site, I write to confirm that this Government has now made the decision not to progress with this site.”
The minister highlighted that steps would be taken to ensure that the sale of the site will be ‘carried out appropriately, and the correct market value is reflected.’
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