Inside the Bibby Stockholm as work begins to rehome asylum seekers after Labour closure announcement

At 1.50pm last Tuesday asylum seekers on the Bibby Stockholm began to hear the news that the barge would soon be closed. Minutes later, a message went out from the barge manager, calling for residents to gather in the kitchen.

Adam, a 26-year-old Yemeni asylum seeker, told The Independent of the joy among residents.

“I can’t tell you how happy they were,” he said.

“They were very happy. Everyone was saying we are not happy just for us but for those who might be moved to the Bibby Stockholm in the future.

“If you have been through something bad you don’t want it even for your worst enemy.”

Following Labour’s election win, the Home Office announced last week that the controversial barge at Portland port in Dorset will be closed in January 2025. Home office minister Dame Angela Eagle has made the decision not to renew the contract.

The barge, which was expected to house up to 430 people, cost £15.8m to run over the past year and will cost another £19m this financial year.

Around 100 people present on the barge on Tuesday gathered in the canteen to hear the news from the barge manager directly, Adam said.

They were told people who had been living on the Bibby Stockholm for less than six months would have their asylum interviews on the barge, Adam said.

Those who had been there longer would be transferred into temporary accommodation, such as hotels, and have their asylum interviews there.

The interviews are done by Home Office case workers to assess whether someone has a valid claim for refuge in the UK.

Adam, who arrived in the UK in July 2023, said: “We got a message from the barge manager saying he wanted to meet us all in the kitchen at 3pm.

“He told us that the contract would not be renewed. Then he explained that we will try to finish your interviews as soon as possible.

“We have three rooms inside the barge [for the interviews] and you get a call to go there, and they try and do 16 persons each day.”

Residents have said that the uncertainty of when their asylum claims will be processed has a big impact on their mental health.

“The thing that made us the most happy was when the Home Office manager said that they will take care of the people and finish their asylum interviews,” Adam, whose name has been changed, said.

Residents are routinely moved off the Bibby Stockholm if they have been on the barge too long or if they have received an asylum decision. To ease pressure on the local council in Dorset, asylum seekers from the Bibby are sent elsewhere in the UK.

Occasionally, residents have been moved off the barge because the Home Office admitted it was unsuitable accommodation for them, such as one asylum seeker who was moved after safeguarding concerns were raised due to their sexuality.

Twelve people were in this situation from January to March 2024, according to data obtained by The Independent.

Home secretary Yvette Cooper has made the processing of asylum claims a key priority since taking up the post, scrapping the flagship Rwanda scheme and accusing the Tories of creating a “Hotel California” asylum system where people enter the backlog of cases and never leave.

Ms Cooper told MPs that civil servants had “effectively stopped making the majority of asylum decisions” due to the impact of the Illegal Migration Act, a piece of legislation brought in under the Tory government.

She will now use legislation to end certain provisions in the Illegal Migration Act so that the Home Office can “immediately start clearing cases from after March 2023”.

Adam, who trained as an IT engineer in Malaysia, said that people on the barge are feeling more positive about their asylum process since the announcement that the Bibby Stockholm will close.

Only days before the news, residents on the barge took part in a three-day peaceful protest. From 15-17 July, a number of men went on hunger strike and hundreds gathered in the bus waiting area in a makeshift demonstration.

“It was totally peaceful. They had some signs that they had made themselves. They took a seat, all of them, maybe around 100 people, on the first day. The second day we decided to make calls to Migrant Help [a charity supporting asylum seekers]. On the third day, we were sitting and one person made a speech thanking everyone for reaching 300 people,” Adam said.

Campaigners estimate close to 400 people are currently living on board, with overcrowding leading to long queues for food and a lack of space on buses into town.

Steve Smith, chief executive of Care4Calais, said the “despair and suffering the barge has caused will live long in the people who were residents of it.”

Imran Hussain, at the Refugee Council, said Labour’s plan to clear the backlog of asylum decisions would reduce “the number of people in the system who need to be accommodated”.

He added: “Ending the use of the Bibby Stockholm, and barges and hotels more generally, will make hugely important savings that help government to fix the asylum system.”

Chancellor Rachel Reeves revealed on Monday that the government had a previously undisclosed in-year overspend of £6.4bn on asylum and immigration.