The refugee accommodation agency COA says it needs to find an extra 1,800 emergency beds after a plan by former asylum minister Marjolein Faber to pay councils to ease the backlog failed to materialise.

The PVV minister had promised local authorities a one-off payment of €30,000 for every asylum seeker they agreed to rehouse or €38,000 if they offered them temporary accommodation, such as in a hotel.

The incentive aimed to ease the overcrowding at the refugee reception centres in Ter Apel and Budel and cut the bill for emergency accommodation on ships and in hotels, which amounts to an average of €66,000 per person per year.

Refugees are supposed to leave the reception centre and move into local authority accommodation when they are granted permission to stay in the Netherlands, but some 19,000 settled refugees – known as statushouders – are stuck in Ter Apel and Budel because they have nowhere to go, Trouw reported on Monday.

Faber came up with the plan in February as an alternative to the so-called ”spreading law”, which gives the asylum minister the right to force councils to accommodate a proportionate share of refugees as a last resort.

Strained facilities

In May she said the regulation would be introduced “imminently”, but it had still not been finalised when PVV party leader Geert Wilders pulled his ministers out of the cabinet a month later, triggering the collapse of the government.

The COA asked eight provincial governments in mid-July to find an extra 2,600 emergency beds, but only 800 have so far been designated. The agency said the long waiting list was placing ”great strain on our facilities”.

Since the withdrawal of the PVV Faber’s responsibilities have been shared between three caretaker ministers, with housing minister Mona Keijzer taking charge of accommodating settled refugees. A new government will take office after the general election on October 29.