Council bosses are hunting for premises to turn into a “large” registered home for unaccompanied asylum seeking children (UASC), it has emerged.

Kent County Council (KCC), which has a statutory duty to care for lone youngsters who enter the UK via the English Channel, is reviewing its own estate for suitable buildings or land.

The facility would be home to children under the age of 16 and, according to the latest available figures, KCC is caring for 535 minors.

News of a children’s home plan comes after a High Court judge ruled KCC must take in all new asylum seekers arriving in the county.

In papers to councillors, the authority’s General Counsel Ben Watts reported that Sarah Hammond, KCC’s Director of Children’s Services (DCS), has been working to comply with the court judgement.

Mr Watts wrote: “She has worked with the council’s infrastructure team who have undertaken an extensive search for land or premises in our area that may be used or repurposed for accommodating UAS children. Work is ongoing to explore the feasibility of those sites.

“The DCS is also exploring the creation of a large registered children’s home in Kent to provide temporary accommodation in-house to unaccompanied asylum seeking children aged under 16.”

With a summer surge in numbers, KCC found itself in the “unthinkable” position of having to consider turning away Kent referrals into care. To favour local cases over foreign nationals could be seen as “discriminatory”, the judge said.

KCC believes the Home Office-agreed National Transfer Scheme (NTS), which is meant to fairly disperse young asylum-seekers to other local authorities, does not work effectively.

But a judge ruled Kent must adhere to the Children’s Act 1989 and accept every new UASC arrival, which numbers around 4,500 a year.

Labour councillor Barry Lewis, who represents Thanet, said: “There are so many caveats and questions around this. How will this be run? Where will it be? Who will pay for it?

“How will the youngsters be supervised without turning the place into a prison or leave them vulnerable to being taken off by undesirable gangs?”

KCC officials are also in discussions with the Home Office over the possibility of hotel sites in Kent to accommodate UASC children being converted into reception centres operated by the council.

Mr Watts wrote: “Whilst Kent County Council is a large local authority, it has neither the resources nor the levers available to central government nor the resources of the combined collective of all local authorities in the country.

“These are vulnerable young people who require support and care, and the DCS is strongly of the view that their needs are best met through an effective and efficient transfer under the NTS.”

Liberal Democrat group leader Cllr Antony Hook said: “A children’s home is a sensible idea, in my view. This council is not equipped to deal with the volume of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.

“I think the government is being unreasonable by refusing to see this as a national issue.”

He said hknows of two sites in Faversham, former care homes, which could fit the bill.

Cllr Hook added: “KCC has loads of buildings in Kent, so it’s just a matter of finding the right one.”

A senior Tory backbencher said: “We went to the High Court with the hope we would get a sympathetic hearing from the judge and it rather backfired on us.

“The fact of the matter is this is a national problem and the Government needs to take it on or find a way of making the NTS work properly.”

Back in July, Mr Watts wrote: “In simple terms…the council cannot safely and adequately look after all the children arriving in Kent in periods where the number and rate of arrivals is greater than the capacity that the council can provide in its children’s services.

“It has become apparent that the scheme is not working as effectively as it should and the numbers of children being transferred and the speed with which those transfers are taking place is insufficient to keep up with the rate of new UASC arrivals.”