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Council fights to stop government housing asylum seekers in hotel, with its leader branding the Home Office ‘irresponsible’

ANOTHER local authority is taking legal action to stop “irresponsible” Tory ministers using a hotel to house vulnerable asylum-seekers.

Fenland District Council has filed an application for an interim injunction at the High Court to stop Serco — the contractor which runs the Home Office’s asylum-seeker operation — from taking over the Rose and Crown Hotel in Cambridgeshire. 

It follows the site in Wisbech being suddenly closed to the public last Friday.

Council leader Chris Boden said: “It is thoroughly irresponsible of the Home Office to consider placing vulnerable people with no recourse to public funding in a town such as Wisbech, without any consultation or consideration of the impact this will have on the asylum-seekers themselves.

“We are in a rural location, with very limited hotel accommodation and transport links, and we already have significant issues with migrant exploitation and human trafficking, which would put any people placed here at risk.”

The change of use from a hotel to a hostel is a “significant” breach of planning law, charged the local authority, which also slammed as “disappointing” Serco’s failure to notify councillors of its plans earlier.

The council is the latest local authority to take legal steps to stop the government from using hotels to house asylum-seekers, following similar moves by councils in Great Yarmouth, the East Riding of Yorkshire, Stoke and Ipswich.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The number of people arriving in the UK who seek asylum and require accommodation has reached record levels, placing unprecedented pressures on the asylum system.

“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.”

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