Controversial government plans to build accommodation centres for asylum seekers in rural areas will exacerbate already severe housing shortages, it was claimed this week.
Centres are proposed for Worcestershire, Oxfordshire and Nottinghamshire. They are the Home Office's latest attempt to control the number of refugees coming into the UK, following the failed dispersal and voucher systems that sparked wide-scale protests.

The plan has been attacked by refugee groups and local councillors. Refugee groups said that housing asylum seekers in remote rural areas risks them becoming "isolated and institutionalised".

Councillors reacted angrily, arguing some small rural areas already have long housing waiting lists and others lack the facilities to deal with an influx of refugees.

In Nottinghamshire, the proposed site for the centre had already been earmarked by the council for 3,000 new homes, a percentage of which would be affordable housing. There are also plans to build a dual carriageway through or near the site.

A council spokesman said both schemes would have to be considered when the planning notification for the centre is received from the Home Office.

In Oxfordshire, Bicester West Conservative councillor Douglas Spencer said: "The wait for local families on the housing waiting list is approximately three years. Asylum seekers will be added to that list, and that will have an effect on the locals who have already waited some time."

He added: "If the government are going to approach this in a mature fashion, then they would place people in the north where there is a lot of empty housing."

Worcestershire Liberal Democrat county councillor Liz Tucker said that the area already had large number of people on waiting lists.

"There is considerable anger around; people feel thoroughly messed about," she said. "This is a very remote location. The area has a post box and a phone box. We don't have anything else."

The Home Office this week dismissed reports that housing asylum seekers will cost taxpayers more than £1bn this year, or £33 per taxpayer. A spokeswoman called the figure "pure speculation", adding that a crackdown on fraud was reducing costs.