MORE than £600,000 could be spent by Bracknell Forest Council to make room for 18 child asylum seekers as part of a government-enforced initiative.

Under Section 100 of the Local Government Act, the council will be required to take on asylum-seeking children and teenagers in the coming months after the Government announced it would be rolling out a regional 'dispersal scheme'.

The borough currently has just one refugee under 18.

The council was only informed of the Government's regional dispersal scheme for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC) at the beginning of the month and could see the scheme forced up on it if it doesn't accept it voluntarily.

The Government will provide £41,610 per year for children under 16 and £33,215 per child aged between 16 and 17.

A total of £200 per child per week for those who qualify for leaving care support will be funded.

However a number of local authorities have warned this amount might not cover all costs placed on councils.

The council's chief executive, Timothy Wheadon, said: "There has been a massive increase in asylum seekers with a particular pressure on places with certain transport links such a motorway services, airports and ports.

"The impact on somewhere like Kent, where 900 unaccompanied children out of the total 1300 in the South East are, is unsustainable.

"90 per cent of them under male and 67 per cent are between 16 and 17 and the largest groups are from Eritrea, Afghanistan and Albania and more recently Iran and Iraq.

"The cost on the council could reach £600,000 but that depends on the need of the children and the delay in the top up arrangements the Government provides."

The council's executive member for adult services, health and housing, Cllr Dale Birch, said: "I don't think this is a very acceptable way of dealing with a very sensitive subject..

"The only plan the government can up with is to disperse them wherever and just allocate against a formula.

"I'm not a fan of this way of doing business; if we don't accept this we will see a busload of people turn up.

"These are young people in a traumatised state. My worry is that after moving them on will they have anyone in the community they can identify with? The first thing we have to do is to get them to Bracknell Forest in the least traumatic way possible. "

An asylum seeker is a person who has applied for asylum under the 1951 Refugee Convention on the Status of Refugees on the ground that if 'he or she is returned to his/her country of origin he or she has a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political belief or membership of a particular social group'.

Once a UASC turns 18, they enter the care system and are usually moved into supported living accommodation; many remain the responsibility of the local authority until they are 25 if they are in full-time education.