'Closure' of hotels housing asylum seekers criticised by Portsmouth councillors

The Home Office announcement made last week calls for 50 hotels will close their doors to asylum seekers by the end of January next year – there are currently 400 hotels used for contingency accommodation in the UK.

The pledge, as stated by Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick, aims to reduce an “eye-watering” daily cost of £8m associated with contingency accommodation.

He added: “With small boat arrivals down more than 20 per cent compared with last year, we can now start to restore these hotels to their rightful use for local communities.”

Locally, the Home Office has been criticised for its management of asylum cases in response to the announcement.

Malcolm Little, chairman of Portsmouth City of Sanctuary, said the charity welcomes tax money “not being wasted” but they “do not welcome the alternatives” such as the use of barges or increased immigration detention.

“We don’t feel barges are ideal to accommodate asylum seekers particularly those who have had a very stressful journey by water,” he said.

“We don’t support unnecessary and expensive detention of migrants at all – such as the Haslar Immigration Removal Centre opening in Gosport.

“The government, we think, are conflating several issues because they failed to manage the backlog in cases over the last ten years.

“We can organise the Olympics, we can win a world war but we can’t cope with an increase in casework.”

Mr Little added that, at present, there is one hotel in Portsmouth being used to house asylum seekers.

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Councillor Steve Pitt, the leader of Portsmouth City Council, said the administration hasn’t been notified by the Home Office regarding the announcement.

He added that the problem originates from the lack of safe routes for those claiming asylum.

“That’s one of the reasons why people are taking their lives into their hands and we’re seeing people lose their lives everyday,” he said.

“If the government is hell-bent on maintaining this broken system that they’ve got at the moment they need to manage it better to make sure that people aren’t kept waiting for months, in some cases years.

“They need to find the money to do that, it’s not a ‘nice to have’ it’s an absolute essential to respect people’s human rights.”