Put new arrivals in holiday camps
Caravan parks, military bases and student halls of residence also being eyed up by ministers
CHANNEL migrants could be housed in holiday parks as ministers scramble to house the rising numbers making the illegal crossing.
Ministers have discussed dispersing asylum seekers to resorts such as Pontins and Butlin’s, as well as caravan parks, military bases and even university halls of residence.
home secretary suella Braverman has also proposed changing planning laws to allow vacant government buildings to be converted into temporary accommodation without planning permission.
however, ministers have ruled out using cruise ships, despite the idea being put forward by Rishi sunak in the summer.
The scramble for accommodation comes despite growing optimism that the Government will sign a deal with France next week aimed at stepping up patrols to prevent the people traffickers’ boats taking to the water.
Downing street said that an agreement was in the ‘final stages’ following talks between the Prime Minister and President Emmanuel Macron. Mrs Braverman is hoping to arrange a meeting with French counterpart, Gerald Darmanin, next week to finalise the details.
The deal is expected to involve the UK paying Paris an extra £80million to help fund patrols along hundreds of miles of the French coastline.
For the first time, UK Border Force officers will be permitted to work inside the French control rooms that coordinate the searches for people smuggling gangs.
But Mr Macron has resisted calls to allow British personnel to conduct joint patrols. The UK agreed to pay France £55million last year to step up patrols.
Downing street insisted the cash had produced dividends, with French patrols preventing 29,000 people from making the hazardous crossing.
Despite this, a record 40,000 have made their way to the UK this year, putting pressure on the Government to increase cooperation with France.
A Whitehall source said the expected arrangement would help but acknowledged it was ‘not a silver bullet’.
Bad weather has slowed the rate of crossings in recent days, but ministers are braced for fresh boatloads to arrive next week.
Ministers looked at using resorts run by Pontins last year, with sites at Camber sands in East sussex and Prestatyn in north Wales both mentioned as possible locations.
‘Surge of illegal arrivals’
‘Restoring public confidence’
But a renewed drive has been launched amid growing difficulty in finding suitable hotels for the stream of new arrivals.
insiders said that resorts used would be block-booked, leaving them unavailable for holiday makers.
A home Office source said: ‘As you’d expect we’re looking at a range of options to tackle the problem of finding accommodation for what has been an unprecedented surge of illegal arrivals in small boats.
‘it’s not straightforward and we’ll ensure that local communities are consulted on any proposals.’
At a private meeting with Conservative backbenchers this week Rishi sunak said resolving the Channel crisis was his second biggest domestic priority – after the economy.
One source at the meeting said: ‘he did seem to get the importance of restoring public confidence in our borders.
‘he made the point that a prime minister is able to focus on only a small number of issues, and that this would be one of them.’
The home Office is spending £6.8million a day to house almost 50,000 asylum seekers and Afghan refugees in hotels. some are even staying in luxury hotels at a cost of more than £150 a night.
take in refugees. We will open again next February, maybe March.’
Local MP Robin Millar said this week: ‘I am concerned about the impact on local communities and the suitability of this property, in this location, for this purpose. It is a hotel, not a detention centre’.
In Blackpool, where the Illuminations season is bringing thousands of visitors to the Lancashire seaside resort, MP Paul Maynard spoke out in Parliament about the famous Metropole Hotel being requisitioned. He said the promenade site was unsuitable for them or the community as it stood in an area which already had social problems.
Difficulties of a similar kind have emerged in Essex where the fourstar Great Hallingbury Manor has been taken over to house 50 male migrants aged under 40 from North Africa, with two staff looking after them, according to locals.
The Tudor-style property has 44 double rooms, 20 in chalets in its wooded grounds near a lake, a picnic area, and barbecue site. A sign on the door states clearly: ‘Our hotel is closed to the public. Apologies for any inconvenience.’
A member of staff reportedly told a visiting journalist: ‘They have the run of the hotel, the bedrooms are very comfortable. There are three meals a day, but some have complained about what is served. They spend their days walking about or playing football.’
Another Home Office - requisitioned hotel causing controversy — at least among disgruntled locals — is The Dolphin Hotel beside the Great Ouse river in St Ives, Cambridgeshire.
It has glorious views of a 15thcentury bridge, and there are bigscreen TVs for the migrant visitors to enjoy. However, one local — who asked not to be named — said: ‘People used to spend a fortune to stay here or live nearby overlooking the river. It is more like a student halls of residence now.’ Meanwhile, people living near the Holiday Inn Express, Rotherham, have complained about the noise. They say that men housed at the hotel play ‘really loud music all night long’.
Local MP John Healey said the hotel is ‘unsuited’ as accommodation for 130 refugees. He said this is because the area is far from the town centre and there is already a shortage of NHS capacity, adding that using hotels in this way was the result of a failing and unfair asylum system.
Joe Theaker, an HGV driver who lives nearby, called for a curfew as his children cannot sleep.
In Bristol, a group of migrants living at the Holiday Inn near the airport have said they are ‘cut off from shops, people, and asylum seekers’ services’. The 100 young men from Sudan, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Somalia, have to take buses into the city for medical or legal appointments.
Living in finer style near Grantham in Lincolnshire are migrants at another four- star hotel, Stoke Rochford Hall. Advertised as a luxury Victorian country mansion, set within formal landscaped gardens, the establishment has been criticised for cancelling weddings while migrants have been given residence. During a parliamentary debate this week after the ‘Downton Abbey- style’ hotel’s use was highlighted by The Mail on Sunday, Edward Leigh, a Conservative MP in the county, said the hotel normally charged £400 a night. He described it as a ‘farce’ compounded by the swift way migrants found themselves in hotel accommodation after arrival.
In Shakespeare country, the picturesque Grosvenor Hotel, Stratford-upon-Avon, has been taken over for families of asylum seekers. And in Melton Mowbray, a country house hotel that was once the hunting lodge of the creator of Colman’s mustard, one Colonel Colman, is now earmarked to be the home of migrants for a second time.
Last year when it was used for the purpose, an enraged would-be visitor wrote on a travel webpage that he had not been informed that he would be staying in a ‘hotel full of migrants’.
Disturbingly, at a migrant hotel in the outer London borough of Waltham Forest, an investigation is now under way over a child and a teenager who were allegedly both sexually assaulted. The hotel holds 450 migrants, including 150 children.
The Metropolitan police said a 17-year-old boy had been charged with one count of sexual touching of a 13- year- old. In a second incident a man in his 30s has been questioned and bailed for a New Year court appearance regarding the rape of a teenage boy.
This week the Home Office admitted using hotels to house migrants was ‘unacceptable’ and that it was a short-term solution.
Yet, it has to be said that with more illegal migrants expected across from France in boats this weekend, it is highly probable that still fewer hotels will be open to visitors wanting hospitality at Christmas or New Year. PRINTED AND DISTRIBUTED BY PRESSREADER PressReader.com +1 604 278 4604 . ORIGINAL COPY . ORIGINAL COPY . ORIGINAL COPY . ORIGINAL COPY . ORIGINAL COPY ORIGINAL COPY COPYRIGHT AND PROTECTED BY APPLICABLE LAW
‘All reservations have been cancelled’
‘People used to spend a fortune to stay there’