Home Office earmarks £647million for small-boat migrants arriving in Britain over TEN years

By SAM GREENHILL, THE CHIEF REPORTER and ANDREW BUCKWELL Published: 16:47, 2 June 2026 | Updated: 16:48, 2 June 2026 Home Office chiefs have chalked up a whopping £647million to process small-boats migrants arriving in Britain. The latest government contract to run a reception centre in Kent covers 10 years - underlining how officials expect the Channel problem to grow. Details were revealed of new deals with two firms to operate the arrivals facility in Manston. They are to run for at least six years, with options to extend to 10. Overall the contract is worth £539,116,089 plus VAT, making a total of £647million if the deal runs for 10 years.  US-owned prison firm Management and Training Corporation (MTC) has been given the lion’s share of the contract, with Crawley-based Definitive PSA Limited also taking a chunk. Migrants in the sea at Gravelines beach, between Calais and Dunkirk, including some with children in their arms Several dozen migrants on a Border Force vessel at the Western Jet Foil in Dover port after being picked up mid-Channel by immigration officials Migrants leave a coach at the Manston Immigration Processing Centre near Ramsgate in Kent Both firms are already involved in running the Manston base, near Ramsgate, where new Channel arrivals are taken to be processed into Britain by Home Office staff and assessed by Border Force officials.  It sees migrants held for a maximum of 96 hours for identity, security, and health checks before being transported to other accommodation around the UK. Details in the contract, published on the government website, said the service providers would be ‘responsible for supporting with the processing of individuals arriving via Small Boats, from the point of disembarkation through to dispersal’. In its last accounts, MTC said it turned over £28.4million in 2024, which was a rise of £5.2million on the previous year. In the past, MTC has faced Ofsted criticism over conditions at a youth jail, Rainsbrook secure training centre, near Rugby, where children as young as 15 were locked up for more than 23 hours a day with ‘no justifiable rationale’ during the coronavirus pandemic. All children were removed from Rainsbrook in July 2021, after subsequent inspections documented physical assaults, children carrying weapons and warnings from staff that someone was likely to die at the centre. Some of the children were sent to adult prisons instead. Definitive PSA said it made £18.3million in turnover in 2024, up by £1.2million on 2023. The Home Office said: 'This government has reduced asylum support costs by nearly a billion since the general election. This new contract is expected to generate significant yearly savings for the taxpayer by streamlining the number of suppliers. 'The Home Secretary is taking tough action to fix our broken immigration system – removing the incentives that draw people here illegally, scaling up removals and revoking the legal duty to provide asylum-seeker support.'  The initial contract is valued at £303.3million over six years, with optional one-year extensions of £58.9million each over an additional four years. Officials said it was 'flexible and scalable' and includes break clauses 'allowing us to reduce our level of support or terminate the contract depending on small boat numbers'. No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual We will automatically post your comment and a link to the news story to your Facebook timeline at the same time it is posted on MailOnline. To do this we will link your MailOnline account with your Facebook account. We’ll ask you to confirm this for your first post to Facebook. You can choose on each post whether you would like it to be posted to Facebook. Your details from Facebook will be used to provide you with tailored content, marketing and ads in line with our Privacy Policy.