THE bill for housing asylum seekers in the North-East and North Yorkshire has soared more than 1,300 per cent over the past six years, new figures reveal.

Local authorities will pay out £2.3m this year for refugees in their care, compared with £158,000 in 1998-1999, according to the Government statistics.

The Home Office said last night that councils were reimbursed for much of the cost, but a spokes-man could not say whether its grants covered the full amount.

The figures, produced in a parliamentary answer, reveal that ten of 11 local authorities in the North-East and North Yorkshire saw their bills rise over the six-year period.

By far the biggest increase was in Middlesbrough, which was up from zero to £1m, followed by Stockton (£20,000 to £507,000) and Redcar and Cleveland (£86,000 to £269,000).

Other authorities with large expenditures include Hartlepool (up from zero to £165,000), Gateshead (up from £18,000 to £118,000) and Sunderland (up from zero to £101,000).

Asylum seekers have been moved to the North and elsewhere to relieve pressure on services in London and the South-East, under the Government's dispersal system.

More than 100,000 asylum seekers have been dispersed. If they refuse to go, they face immediate loss of income, housing and legal support.

Furthermore, Home Secretary David Blunkett has announced plans to ban successful asylum seekers from returning to the South-East by removing their right to local authority housing.

A Home Office spokesman said that local authorities were given funding to cover the cost of housing asylum seekers through the National Asylum Support Service.

He said: "Local authorities are able to make special circumstances bids if they can show that asylum seekers are unable to live within the grant paid."

Across the country, local councils will pay out £398m this year - double the bill of £193m six years earlier, according to the Government figures.

A study last year criticised the dispersal system as costly and inefficient, because many of the chosen places lacked specialist services, such as interpreters.

The report said the Government should recognise that many of the asylum seekers dispersed and granted refugee status would remain in those areas.

There are just over 9,000 asylum applications a month - little more than one-third of the total of 25,000 at its peak two years ago.

But critics say that only 63,830 of the 336,270 failed asylum seekers who have gone through the system have actually been removed from the country.

Latest figures, for June this year, showed that 4,620 asylum seekers were being housed in the North-East, but many are in private, rather than council, accommodatio