THE Home Office says it is determined to stamp out the use of hotels to accommodate immigrants. ‘We are furious,’ a Home Office source has been quoted as saying, ‘at the levels of illegal migrants and asylum hotels . . . we will close every single one.’
As Madeleine Gillies has reported in these pages, residents of Crowborough in East Sussex are up in arms about plans to house 540 male asylum seekers (aka illegal migrants) at the Army camp close to the town. This is part of a strategy to close migrant hotels.
Home Office Asylum & Returns System Delivery Director Andrew Larter told two public meetings in Crowborough last month that security at the camp will be provided to keep the migrants safe. Although they must clock in and out when entering and leaving the camp they are free to do this at any time, unlike troops who have used the camp in the past who have been under military discipline and could not be absent without leave (AWOL) without consequences. By contrast if the migrants fail to clock back in, again in the words of Andrew Larter at the public meetings, they will be ‘phoned after seven days to check they are all right and to see if they require alternative accommodation’.
According to the relevant government ‘factsheet’, Crowborough Camp will provide ‘accommodation, catering and laundry on site . . . asylum seekers will be free to come and go’. This is sounding very like a hotel!
Furthermore, they can ‘contact Migrant Help 24 hours a day if they need help, advice or guidance’. This sounds not dissimilar to a hotel concierge service!
Primary health care will be provided on site. Crowborough residents struggling to get a GP appointment might feel this sounds better than a hotel!
Asylum seekers at an established camp at Wethersfield in Essex enjoy gym facilities, fitness classes, swimming and other water activities, sports and recreational facilities such as pool tables. There is no reason to think Crowborough Camp will be any less accommodating. especially as Andrew Larter argued at the public meetings that residents would not wish to leave the camp to go into Crowborough due to the range of activities provided for them on site. This is sounding like rather a nice hotel!
Families4Peace, which helps fund leisure activities for asylum seekers and is part-funded by the National Lottery Community Fund, will perhaps be able to upgrade these facilities in due course. The idea is frequently mooted that migrants at the camp will be bussed to other local towns such as Tunbridge Wells or Uckfield for further leisure activities. This sounds very much like a hotel excursion.
Major works are under way at the Camp to make it fit for said asylum seekers. Accommodation which was considered absolutely fine for British Army cadets is being checked for asbestos, upgraded and improved at a cost which the Home Office itself admits will make housing migrants there no cheaper – once these renovation costs are factored in – than housing them in hotels.
The fact is that the government is mendacious when it states that it will close migrant hotels by housing asylum seekers in Army camps. In Crowborough it is to all intents and purposes building another migrant hotel.
