ASYLUM seekers have been put in new £300,000 town houses complete with en-suite bathrooms, electric vehicle charging points and underfloor heating.
The four privately owned, three-bed properties have a rental value of £1,200 a month.
They have been leased to public service company Serco, working on behalf of the Home Office , to house migrant families while their applications are processed.
The move, in a Suffolk village, which we are not naming, was announced last week with a councillor saying the community had responded “very positively”.
It comes as Labour seeks to close asylum hotels and put migrants into private housing.
But last night villagers demanded to know why struggling locals were not offered them — and claimed they were kept in the dark.
Gardener Clive Bloomfield, 62 who has lived there all his life, told The Sun: “It’s all just happened without us knowing about it. Our opinions don’t seem to count.
“There’s people working hard to try and get on the property ladder and they’re not considered.”
Wife Susan, 64, added: “We’re paying for all of this. Why are we working hard for asylum seekers to just get everything for free?”
Mum-of-two and customer adviser Laura Garland, 40, agreed the move had caused uproar.
She said: “There are people born in this country that pay taxes who can’t get housing.
“Then you get these families who are put straight into brand new three-bedroom houses. The worst thing is — none of us knew. We’ve been kept in the dark.”
Joiner Dylan Keseru, 26, said: “You hear the news and think this is in the towns and cities. But now it is hitting home it’s right next door. There’s a lot of teenagers in the village who might like the opportunity to buy a place here, so for housing like that to be let out to asylum seekers — paid for by taxpayers — is unbelievable.”
Ricky Morgan, 68 who moved from Walthamstow, North East London, a year ago, attacked the government for “giving migrants everything for free”.
Others were supportive of their new neighbours. Lizzie Simmonds said her mum and others have been providing basic necessities.
Lizzie told The Sun: “If people need to come here, let them.
“Let them have the opportunities that they weren’t given before. There’s a reason they left.”
At least one migrant family is believed to have moved in so far.
They are understood to have arrived by a legal route, not by boat, then made an asylum application when visas expired.
The Suffolk council’s latest figures show almost 800 people were waiting to bid for council or housing association properties last year.
By July, there were over 106,000 people in the UK in receipt of asylum support.
Of those, 32,000 were in hotels, 70,000 were in other accommodation including private dwellings and houses in multiple occupation.
Earlier this year, it emerged Serco was offering private landlords five-year guaranteed full deals to rent to migrants.
This included free property management, full repair and maintenance, plus utility bills .
The Labour government has a manifesto commitment to close all asylum hotels.
Last week the Home Office won an appeal over a High Court’s decision to grant an interim injunction to Epping Forest District Council in Essex blocking the use of The Bell hotel to asylum seekers.
Yesterday, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said it was right to keep open The Bell — as closing it would have led to “lots of disruption” and left asylum seekers “on the streets”.
Meanwhile, the Tories plan to force a vote on giving authorities greater say before properties are allocated to asylum seekers.
The Home Office insists it listens to local concerns when identifying sites.
Today Home Secretary Yvette Cooper will update on the UK’s returns deal with France.
She is also expected to say the National Crime Agency disrupted 347 criminal networks in the past year, up 40 per cent year-on-year.
The Home Office said: “At its peak, less than two years ago, there were 400 asylum hotels in use at a cost of almost £9million a day.
“We have taken urgent action over the past year to fix that system, doubling the rate of asylum decision-making, and reducing the amount of money spent on asylum hotels by almost a billion pounds.”
Serco declined to comment.
