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The UK Government's plans to house asylum seekers at two military sites have been delayed following opposition from affected Labour MPs, campaigners and local people.

Last month the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood announced that she would bring two military sites - Cameron Barracks in Inverness and Crowborough army training camp in East Sussex - into use.

The Home Office said it would move 900 people into the sites by the end of this year as part of its plans to close asylum hotels, amid far-right protests and disorder.

However, sources in the department have told Byline Times that local Labour MPs have refused to look at military sites in their constituencies, with one saying that they do not want to further inflame tensions within local communities. Sources added that there is also "an obvious tension" between the Home Office, which leads on asylum accommodation strategy, and the Ministry of Defence, which owns the sites.

In opposition, Keir Starmer had opposed housing asylum seekers on military sites as being costly and "inhuman", with the then opposition leader accusing the Conservative Government of "lurching from one ridiculous proposition to the next".

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Despite pushing similar schemes in opposition, some local Conservative MPs have also resisted the current plans.

On Monday Nus Ghani, Conservative MP for Sussex Weald, met with Defence Minister Luke Pollard to raise her concerns regarding the security of the Crowborough site and her "lack of confidence in the Home Office and Wealden District Council in ensuring the site is safe, legal and compliant." Pollard confirmed that the site will not be operational until at least the start of 2026.

Liberal Democrat MP Angus Macdonald also described the Government's decision to house 300 asylum seekers at Cameron barracks in Inverness as "odd". Moving asylum seekers from hotels in the city centre to the training camp, which is also in the city centre, was "effectively the same thing", he said.

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Starmer's Government hopes that moving people away from hotels in town centres to barracks, which tend to be in less populated areas, will save money and deescalate local community tensions.

But experts suggest that the use of military sites will exceed those of hotels. A report from the National Audit Office last year found that barracks would be £46 million more expensive than hotels over a decade.

In October the Home Affairs Select Committee said that the Home Office had "squandered billions" of pounds of taxpayer's money on a "failed, chaotic and expensive system" with "flawed contracts" and "incompetent delivery".

Campaigners fear that the use of military sites is a "sleeper issue", which could cause significant tensions with local communities, similar to the riots and protests outside asylum hotels last summer and earlier this year.

"Our attention should absolutely be on planned use of large sites," said Lou Calvey, executive director of charity Asylum Matters. "We know that warehousing vulnerable people without legal access or medical care won't do anything to solve the problems in the system. It doesn't reduce the costs - in fact it increases them. They need to be speeding up processing, not whacking a load of people on a bit of land in the middle of nowhere."

In addition to military sites, the Home Office is looking at a range of alternative accommodation options, including student halls, pre-fabricated portacabins and Nightingale hospitals used during the Covid pandemic.

The Government already houses asylum seekers on two military sites in England. Wet...