Asylum seekers will soon have to be housed on boats or in tents, junior justice minister Fred Teeven told tv news programme Nieuwsuur on Sunday evening.

‘There is enormous pressure,’ Teeven told the programme. ‘We have asked local councils to work more quickly in supplying places to live for asylum seekers but it is not going quickly enough.’

Six weeks ago, the minister said the number of asylum seekers reaching the Netherlands had gone up from 1,000 a month to 1,000 a week. Refugee centres which had been closed are being reopened and former prisons brought into service to cope with the influx.

However, the asylum seekers need to be moved on into housing otherwise these locations will become over-full, Teeven told Nieuwsuur.

If this happens, it will be necessary to house refugees on boats or in tent camps, he said.