It's always preferable on HN to provide a hard link when quoting figures.
For example when I searched for the same information just now I found links to both newspaper reports and a current UK audit that state*:
Home Office says Labour inherited asylum system in chaos with applicants stuck in backlog.
Accommodation for asylum seekers is expected to cost more than £15bn, three times the amount the Home Office originally estimated, according to the latest figures.
The Conservative government signed contracts in 2019 that were due to pay £4.5bn of taxpayers’ money to three companies over a decade.
However, a report by the National Audit Office, the government spending watchdog, says that number is now estimated to be £15.3bn over the 10-year period.
Which suggests the housing cost has blown out by a factor of three to be a whopping £1.5bn per year. Somewhat less than the figure you gave without reference up thread.
Still, it's not all that bad, the new UK government is claiming that:
A Home Office spokesperson said: “As this report shows we inherited an asylum system in chaos with tens of thousands stuck in a backlog, claims not being processed and disastrous contracts that were wasting millions in taxpayer money.
“We’ve taken immediate action to fix it – increasing asylum decision making by 52% and removing 24,000 people with no right to be here, meaning there are now fewer asylum hotels open than since the election. By restoring grip on the system and speeding up decision making we will end the use of hotels and are forecast to save the taxpayer £4bn by the end of 2026.”
Bringing the annual cost down in the four to five years remaining.
> but I think that level of impact assessment is going a bit too far. I doubt any other project has ever had to take those into account.
Well, you'd be wrong on that point, it's common for economists to look at the knock effects of money moving through through an economy, there's even several terms for different aspects of that, eg: multiplier effect **.
(I recall that one from high school economics 101 some 45+ years past)
In this instance it's literally a case of UK taxpayer money being paid out to other UK taxpaying companies, mostly large, some small, and being injected back into the UK economy as ?? (more building, more investment, more taxable activity).
For example when I searched for the same information just now I found links to both newspaper reports and a current UK audit that state*:
Which suggests the housing cost has blown out by a factor of three to be a whopping £1.5bn per year. Somewhat less than the figure you gave without reference up thread.Still, it's not all that bad, the new UK government is claiming that:
Bringing the annual cost down in the four to five years remaining.> but I think that level of impact assessment is going a bit too far. I doubt any other project has ever had to take those into account.
Well, you'd be wrong on that point, it's common for economists to look at the knock effects of money moving through through an economy, there's even several terms for different aspects of that, eg: multiplier effect **.
(I recall that one from high school economics 101 some 45+ years past)
In this instance it's literally a case of UK taxpayer money being paid out to other UK taxpaying companies, mostly large, some small, and being injected back into the UK economy as ?? (more building, more investment, more taxable activity).
* https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/07/uk-asylum-seek...
** https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/1948/economics/the-multip...