The UK Government began housing asylum seekers on Monday on a residential barge in Portland. The Home Office announced that the government intends to increase the number of asylum seekers onboard this “alternative accommodation option” over the coming months.

The first cohort of 15 asylum seekers boarded the vessel, Bibby Stockholm barge, on Monday. This is part of an “ongoing structured process to bring a cohort of 500 people on board,” according to the Home Office. Migrants are to stay on board between three and nine months while they go through the formal asylum seeking process in the UK. The Home Office stated that the barge has passed all health, fire and safety checks. This “tried and tested approach” to housing asylum seekers has also been used in Scotland. The Home Office claimed this method is more financially sustainable and “manageable for local communities” as it “reduce[s] the use of expensive hotels” and “offers better value for the British taxpayer.”

However, when speaking to the BBC, the Home Office’s Director for Asylum Accommodation Cheryl Avery confirmed that they have faced “minor legal challenges” in enforcing this accommodation. While she did not comment on these legal issues, she stated that a group of twenty asylum seekers refused to board the barge. Currently, accommodations on the barge are “offered to individuals on a no choice basis,” and making any improvement to this will have to be considered by the government in the future.

This new scheme follows shortly after the Illegal Migration Act was implemented into UK law, which deems that anyone who arrives in the UK “illegally” cannot claim asylum and will be detained and removed from the UK. Furthermore, the UK Government’s highly criticized “Rwanda Plan” remains in its judicial review process after previously being held unlawful by the Court of Appeal.

Amid this crackdown on migration to the UK, these approaches have received criticism from many human rights groups. Amnesty UK condemned the UK’s new accommodation scheme as “disgraceful” and stated that the barge is “a stark stark symbol of the UK’s inhuman “no asylum” policy that’s turned its back on human rights.” Despite the backlash, Avery confirmed that future sites for other barges are currently being investigated to expand the accommodation scheme in coming months.