Insurers may be unwilling to provide Campsfield House immigration detention centre, near Kidlington, with insurance cover after the fire which wrecked part of the Yarl's Wood centre in Bedfordshire.

Group 4, which manages both centres, is negotiating with a number of insurance companies to secure cover.

Asylum detention centres are viewed as high risk, after Yarl's Wood was virtually destroyed in February by a fire, which caused damage estimated at £97m.

A Group 4 spokesman said incidents at Yarl's Wood and Harmondsworth Detention Centre near Heathrow, which is not managed by Group 4, had made it difficult to get adequate cover. He said: "Because of all these factors the insurance company are saying they can't provide us with adequate insurance.

"Insurance companies are taking a harder line and they are not prepared to take the risk."

Asylum centres are not seen as an attractive risk, and the Government may be asked to meet any shortfall in cover.

Campsfield will close next spring, and the Government has no plans to postpone its closure because of the fire at Yarl's Wood.

Sam Clarke, chairman of Asylum Welcome, which offers support to asylum seekers in Oxfordshire, said: "It's entirely desirable that when it closes, it does so in an orderly manner. I don't think it would benefit any asylum seeker for it to close in a rush." A Home Office spokesman said cover for Campsfield was adequate.

A spokesman for Charrington Insurance, which insures Campsfield, was not prepared to comment.