Councils are to be offered £3,500 per migrant for housing them on barges, according to reports.
The money would be in addition to the £50 per day per person paid by the Home Office to house the migrants, according to the Telegraph’s report.
Ministers say the £50 cost is a third of the £150 a day currently being spent to house 51,000 asylum seekers in nearly 400 hotels.
This week it emerged that a barge moored off the coast at Portland, Dorset will be used to house 500 migrants, despite fierce local opposition.
It is expected to be the first of several sites for barges or ferries.
In August last year, the Home Office was forced to abandon similar plans to house asylum seekers at RAF Linton-on-Ouse in North Yorkshire, after an outcry from local villagers and threats by the council to take legal action against the Government.
Other plans for large scale asylum centres at holiday camps and university campuses were also abandoned after similar protests.
The latest plan is already facing a challenge from Conservative-run Dorset Council which says it has ‘serious concerns about the suitability of the location for this facility’.
Local Tory MP Richard Drax has threatened legal action, saying: ‘We are looking at all legal routes. We will look at any way we can stop this. Every angle is being looked at.’
