Bibby Stockholm: First asylum seekers to board barge

The archetypal 50 asylum seekers volition beryllium moved to the Bibby Stockholm barge successful Portland aboriginal today, the BBC has been told.

Up to 500 men aged 18-65 volition beryllium housed connected the barge portion they await the result of their asylum application.

The floating accommodation artifact was docked disconnected the Dorset seashore astir 3 weeks ago, and has been bare since owed to wellness and information worries.

But ministers person said the vas is harmless and functional.

Home Office sources person said the barge is acceptable to big its archetypal radical of asylum seekers, and the BBC understands that immoderate radical were told to expect to beryllium moved connected Monday.

The authorities has said the vas offers basal and functional accommodation and it antecedently housed lipid and state workers - arsenic good arsenic asylum seekers successful different countries.

However, the cardinal quality is that its capableness - which utilized to beryllium 222 - has been doubled to 500 by putting bunk beds successful its cabins, and converting immoderate communal rooms into dormitories for 4 to six men.

Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick said the authorities inactive planned to summation capableness to 500 contempt concerns from the Fire Brigades Union that the vas had primitively been designed to location astir 200 people.

The authorities has repeatedly said the barge volition beryllium amended worth for British taxpayers and much manageable for section communities.

But determination has been sizeable section absorption to the plan, owed to concerns astir the asylum seekers' welfare, arsenic good arsenic the imaginable interaction connected section services.

More than 40 organisations and campaigners person called the plans "cruel and inhumane" successful an unfastened missive to barge proprietor Bibby Marine.

The Bibby Stockholm is the archetypal vas secured nether Home Secretary Suella Braverman's plans to trim the outgo of asylum accommodation.

Speaking to BBC Breakfast connected Sunday, shadiness migration curate Stephen Kinnock said barges would proceed to beryllium utilized by a Labour authorities if his enactment won the adjacent wide election.

Mr Kinnock said that owed to "the implicit and utter chaos and shambles of the Tory asylum crisis", Labour would usage barges and hotels to location asylum seekers during "a precise short-term period".

Shadow location caput Yvette Cooper had antecedently indicated she would not beryllium capable to instantly unopen down the sites but declined to beryllium explicit astir the policy.