The new migrant hotels: The family homes in leafy suburbia being converted to house small boat migrants as government flounders
JAMES FIELDING, JOHN SIDDLE, DAVID PILDITCH, TOM BEDFORD, STEWART WHITTINGHAM AND ANDREW YOUNG
Mohamed Kamara stands by his single bed behind a small chest of drawers on which he has bags of sweets, fruit and a bottle of soft drink.
He lives in a modest terraced house a mile from the town centre in Nuneaton along with seven other young African men.
His bedroom, which resembles rudimentary university accommodation, is no bigger than 6ft by 8ft but the occupants – all strangers when they arrived – share a spacious modern kitchen, equipped with a double oven, stove and a microwave.
A black marble-effect table is positioned in the middle of the room in front of a black L-shaped sofa in the corner, above which are notices stuck to the wall advising residents in a variety of languages on what to do if their asylum application is successful.
The pebble-dashed property in the once thriving Warwickshire market town now beset with social problems has been Mohamed’s home for the last three months.
Mohamed, 20, arrived in Britain six months ago by small boat, travelling from his home in Guinea and heading via North Africa to Spain and then onto France, where he crossed the Channel in a dinghy.
If he had expected to have been housed in a hotel like thousands of other new arrivals, he was wrong.
For he is part of a secretive government operation to scatter thousands of asylum seekers across working-class communities, leafy suburban avenues, historic market towns and on smart private housing estates bought with taxpayers’ money.
It comes as more than 1,000 migrants arrived in the UK in small boats on Saturday – just as new Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood was ordered to ‘go up a gear’ to stop them.
It is the second-highest number of illegal migrants to enter the country this year in a 24-hour period. Ms Mahmood said it was ‘utterly unacceptable’, and is expected to order the transfer of migrants from hotels to army barracks. She will also consider changing human rights laws to make it easier to reject and deport asylum claimants.
Meanwhile, in the face of public backlash over the thousands still in 200 migrant hotels, the Home Office has now switched strategy.
In what has been dubbed ‘Operation Scatter’ by social media critics, newcomers, including young foreign men under the age of 30, are being given homes on our streets instead.
Housing them in hotels, some luxurious enough for voters wanting to stay in them, has become a headache for the Home Office – and a lightning rod for trouble and ugly flashpoints.
And while dispersing them in private accommodation across Britain is logistically more problematic, they are less visible.
And the numbers speak for themselves. Because while asylum seekers have been arriving in the UK in record numbers – more than 111,000 so far this year alone – only 32,059 are being housed in hotels compared to 56,042 in September 2023.
Since that moment two years ago the change of Government policy dubbed ‘Operation Scatter’ by social media critics has seen more and more new arrivals discretely dispersed into properties owned by private landlords.
Figures uncovered by the Daily Mail show a number of towns and cities in the UK are now home to hundreds of asylum seekers – with not a single one living in a hotel.
Critics claim the policy has placed ‘an intolerable pressure on communities’ while taking ‘desperately needed homes away from local people’ – as well as forcing up rents across the board during an ongoing housing shortage.
Our investigation comes amid reports that private landlords have been ordering families to leave their homes so they can sign lucrative deals to provide accommodation for asylum seekers.
Landlords are said to be scrambling to convert large family-sized houses into bedsits after striking up deals with the Government’s private contractors like Serco, Mears Group and Clearsprings Ready Homes.
The policy has left taxpayers funding the fabulously rich lifestyles of asylum tycoons like Clearsprings boss Graham King, the former caravan park boss who has amassed a personal fortune estimated at £1.015billion.
The Mail: continue reading
Featured image: The Mail
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