Taxpayers have been charged £700,000 to maintain a derelict asylum site that has never been used by the Home Office, The i Paper can reveal.

The Northeye site, in Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, was bought under the previous Conservative government for £15.4m in September 2023 – more than double what the seller paid for it the year before.

The Home Office bought Northeye with the aim of providing around 1,400 bed spaces through a mix of refurbished and new buildings and reduce its reliance on asylum hotels.

Since the Home Office purchased the site, it has incurred more than £660,000 in maintenance, utility and security costs, as well as business rates, according to figures obtained by The i Paper through freedom of information (FoI) requests.

A report by the National Audit Office (N

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