Migrant hotel rooms left empty at taxpayers’ expense

TAxpAYers are footing the bill for empty hotel rooms as more councils fight against housing migrants.

More than 80 hotels across the country have been block-booked by the Home office in a desperate bid to house the record-breaking number of migrants crossing the channel.

But local authorities are pushing back, saying the arrangements breach planning laws and put a strain on stretched services.

A fifth council joined the revolt yesterday against ‘irresponsible’ plans to house asylum seekers in a local hotel.

Fenland District council applied for an interim injunction to stop migrants being housed in the rose and crown Hotel in Wisbech, cambridgeshire.

The hotel suddenly closed to the public on Friday after serco, the contractor which runs the Home office’s asylum seeker operation, took over the building.

Meanwhile, Ipswich Borough council and east riding council took their cases to the High court yesterday as they sought to extend an injunction preventing two local hotels from housing migrants.

In Ipswich, the four-star Novotel Hotel has 64 bedrooms lying empty which the ‘public purse continues to pay for’, lawyers told the court. rooms in the 101-bedroom hotel typically go for £70 a night but have sat empty for two weeks after a temporary injunction was granted preventing new migrants being housed there. lawyers for the council said the plan to close the hotel for 12 months to the public ‘would result in the loss of the biggest hotel in the town centre’ and could ‘have a damaging effect’ on the local hospitality and leisure sector. In Hull’s 77-room Humber View Hotel, weddings and corporate events have been cancelled after the Home office eyed up the hotel to house single adult male migrants. Judgments will be handed down at a later date.

legal challenges have also been launched by Great Yarmouth Borough council and stoke city council. last week, a High court judge rejected stoke city council’s application to extend an injunction because of the urgent need of accommodation for migrants. councillor chris Boden, leader of Fenland District council, said it was taking legal action because the area has already had ‘significant issues with migrant exploitation and human trafficking’.

He said it was ‘thoroughly irresponsible of the Home office to consider placing vulnerable people with no recourse to public funding in a town such as Wisbech’, which he said was rural and had limited transport links. In a previous statement, a Home office spokesman said: ‘The Home office and partners identify sites for accommodation based on whether they are safe and available.

‘While we accept that hotels do not provide a long-term solution, they do offer safe, secure and clean accommodation, and we are working hard with local authorities to find appropriate accommodation during this challenging time.’