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Asylum seekers “crammed” into budget hotel commandeered by the Home Office (18 September 2014)

Date: 18/09/2014
Duncan Lewis, Immigration Solicitors, Asylum seekers “crammed” into budget hotel commandeered by the Home Office

The conditions faced by asylum seekers in the UK have been highlighted in news reports revealing many asylum seekers are crammed into cheap hotels, which the Home Office has block-booked exclusively to house migrants applying for asylum in the UK.

A report in The Mirror has highlighted the plight of more than 500 asylum seekers staying at a 98-bed budget hotel in Crystal Palace, southeast London.

The group has been living there for more than four months, sharing cramped conditions while their applications for asylum in the UK are processed by the Home Office.

Many asylum seekers arrive in the UK after a perilous journey and may also be traumatised, having fled civil war or persecution in their home countries for their religion or sexuality.

The Home Office has block-booked the Euro Queen’s Hotel in Crystal Palace exclusively for four months, The Mirror reports.

The asylum seekers are forced to share with strangers in bedrooms meant to accommodate a family of four.

The hotel has applied for planning permission to extend to a nearby building, to cope with the demand for accommodation for asylum seekers.

The group currently staying at the hotel are thought to originate from Syria and Libya, as well as Somalia, Sudan and Eritrea.

The UK has previously been criticised for not taking more refugees from Syria – to date it is thought just 30 Syrian refugees have been allowed to remain in Britain.

However, accommodating asylum seekers in suitable premises has become a problem for the Home Office – and conditions in immigration detention centres such as Yarl’s Wood in Bedfordshire have been severely criticised in the media.

Last week, the Home Office was forced to remove 68 asylum seekers from the Euro Queen’s Hotel in Crystal Palace, after council inspectors deemed the accommodation had become too crowded.

A 20-year-old asylum seeker from Sudan, Edi, said that it had taken him five months to reach the UK to claim asylum – and as well as overcrowding at the hotel, there was little for residents to do:

“The hotel is very nice – but we are five people in a room which is bit crowded and there is not much to do here.
“Sometimes we sit in the room or walk to the park but not for long.

“We have all been told we are to wait here until we get our papers then we will get a place to live but we do not know when that will be.”

Local MP Steve Reed has written to Immigration Minister James Brokenshire to ask why local residents were not told the hotel was being used to house large numbers of vulnerable asylum seekers.

Croydon Council said its officers would be following up reports of overcrowding with weekly visits to ensure the management of the building was “to a good standard.”
A spokesman for the Home Office said it was “taking urgent steps” with its housing providers “to reduce the number of people living at the Queen’s Hotel in Crystal Palace”.

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