It is seven months since plans for a massive asylum seekers' accommodation centre in the heart of rural Oxfordshire were shelved.
But controversy surrounding the failed Bicester Asylum Centre still rages on.
The project, to have been nestled between the villages of Arncott and Piddington, was abandoned because the government said the number of asylum seekers was falling.
It left taxpayers with an £18m hole in their pockets.
Now, a further £12.4m of public money is being paid to a company and its sub-contractors that were due to build the centre.
North Oxfordshire MP, Tony Baldry, who fought the plans from the start alongside residents and Cherwell District Council, is demanding an independent public inquiry into the payment to GSL UK Ltd.
"Local residents feel very frustrated"
"I think it is obscene," the Conservative MP told the BBC News website.
"The government last year announced it had wasted £18m, this is a further £12m.
"I'm not even sure where the money's gone - no buildings have ever gone up or have been demolished. So the government has thrown away £30m."
He has written to the National Audit Office to ask them to investigate.
The Bicester Asylum Centre was due to be part of a network of 10 rural centres across the country where health services, classrooms and other facilities were available for 3,000 asylum seekers, while their applications were processed.
Bicester would have housed about 750 men, women and children, who could come and go freely from the centre during the daytime.
NHS wards 'under threat'
The Home Office said it took the "responsible" action of not proceeding with the centres when it "became clear the costs would outweigh the benefits".
A spokeswoman said: "GSL signed a contract to design build and operate the Bicester Asylum Centre and a good deal of work had gone into it when it was cancelled.
"The £12.4m is to recompense GSL and its sub-contractors for design, planning and preparation work that they had invested in."
She added that the total cost of the failed centres so far was £31m, of which £24m was attributed to Bicester, the "most developed of the projects".
The full cost of Bicester would total just over £30m by the time GSL UK Ltd had been paid in full, she said.
But Mr Baldry is enraged that the money could have gone to the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust, where he said a funding deficit meant wards were "now under threat and operations are being cancelled."
"Local residents feel very frustrated," he said.
Sue Baxter, co-founder of the Bicester Action Group - a group of residents opposed to the centre - said she was angry the money could have paid for a community hospital or social housing.
"Why on earth were those contracts [with GSL UK Ltd] signed in the first place?" she said.
'Considerable costs'
"There was a judicial review pending on detailed plans, which there wasn't even a date for. And those contracts were signed months and months earlier."
A spokeswoman for GSL UK Ltd said: "As is allowed for in contracts of this nature, recompense has been paid towards the considerable costs incurred associated with construction works undertaken, design, legal, financial and professional advisors to meet the client's expectations."
The Home Office spokeswoman added it was still investigating whether the site could be used as a secure immigration removal centre, where failed asylum seekers would be locked up before being deported.
If that went ahead, the value of £7.5m given to GSL would be realised, she said.
An announcement would be made in due course, she added.
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