LONDON The Home Office spent £33 million and four years drawing up plans for accommodation for asylum-seekers before abandoning the project.

The National Audit Office reveals today that none of the four planned accommodation centres was built, partly because of local opposition, lengthy delays in obtaining planning permission and a drop in asylum applications. Work on one centre alone, at Bicester in Oxfordshire, cost £28 million. That sum included £6.3 million for consultancy work and almost £8 million to terminate the £60 million contract with Global Solutions Limited for running the centre, which was to hold 750 people.

The report said that some of the problems with the proposed centre could have been foreseen by officials and taxpayers’ money saved if the Home Office had worked in a “more co-ordinated and joined-up way”.

Home Office officials were “unrealistic” about the potential cost savings of the project, said the report, which aimed to make the asylum application process more efficient by providing all the services under one roof while claims were decided.

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