The £28m Asylum Centre That Never Was...

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The Home Office is facing humiliation over a new spending blunder - squandering £28m of taxpayers' money on an asylum centre that never opened.

In a damning report, the National Audit Office says problems with a proposed centre at Bicester, in Oxfordshire, could have been foreseen and money saved.

The project was plagued with problems after the accommodation centre policy was launched by then home secretary David Blunkett in October 2001.

First, there was widespread local opposition to the building of such a massive centre in a rural area.

Then, a long-winded effort to win planning permission meant that by April 2005 the Home Office ruled the project was no longer economically viable.

A company called Global Solutions Limited (GSL) had been awarded the contract to build the 750-bed centre at a cost of nearly £60m.

After the project was abandoned, GSL was handed termination payments of nearly £8m and another £7.6m for design work.

Edward Leigh MP, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee of MPs, said: "In Bicester, the Home Office spent almost £28m and worked for four years on the asylum centre that never was.

"The Home Office drove ahead with a project to build a network of asylum accommodation centres, without an eye on what was happening to the numbers of those seeking asylum in the UK.

"And, inexplicably, the department seriously misjudged the level of opposition it would face. These factors led to the process being dragged out and the prices getting hiked up."

He added: "Two years since pulling the plug on the scheme it still isn't over. The site the Home Office bought is sitting dormant and no-one seems to have any idea what to do with it."

Another committee member, Tory MP Richard Bacon, said: "The amount the Home Office has written off could have put over 1,300 police officers on the beat across England and Wales.

"Instead, the money was squandered in traditional Home Office fashion."

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman and leadership contender Nick Clegg added: "As thousands of asylum seekers are thrown homeless and without any meaningful support on to the streets of our towns and cities, it is grotesque that the Home Office has spent £28m on a centre that was never built."

Source: Sky News