The leadership of the Conservative-led North Yorkshire local authority which condemned the government over plans to open an asylum seeker centre at a remote former RAF base has once again criticised the Home Office for its treatment of those seeking asylum.
North Yorkshire County Council’s executive member for stronger communities Councillor David Chance said despite having repeatedly been made aware of the complete unsuitability of a hotel near Selby as bridging accommodation for Afghan refugees, the Home Office had announced it now intended to use it for asylum seekers instead.
The move has emerged just weeks after the Home Office revealed it no longer intended to send asylum seekers to Linton on Ouse, north of York, after being told there would be no suitable services for them in the area.
It also comes just three weeks after the final Afghan refugees left the hotel near Selby. After leaving the accommodation there Marwa Koofi, 21, who fled Kabul, Afghanistan when the city fell to the Taliban last year, said she had since “wasted a year because my hotel was in a location where I couldn’t do anything”.
A meeting of the executive of the county council, which in partnership with a range of agencies, continues to provide support to the Afghan refugee families in another bridging hotel in Scarborough, heard families at the Selby hotel had been moved to other hotels.
Councillor Chance said he was unaware of the proposed number of asylum seekers at the hotel.
He said the hotel had written to the government asking to be considered as bridging accommodation for refugees, “much against our better judgement”.
Coun Chance said: “We said that to the Home Office at the time. We do not believe this hotel is suitable for this purpose and I can’t support it.
“You are putting individuals in the middle of a motorway complex with nothing to do and it’s totally wrong, but out of our hands.”
After the meeting, Selby councillor and leader of the council’s Labour group Councillor Steve Shaw Wright said as the hotel was on the side of the former A1 those staying there would face having to walk miles to get anywhere.
He said while Selby Town Council had funded buses to get the Afghan refugees into the town so they could mix with people of their own faith, local councillors had been “really pleased” when they heard the government would close it for refugees.
Coun Shaw Wright said: “We hoped they would go to somewhere more suitable, but it was announced it would be a hotel for individual asylum seekers. That’s even worse because how are they going to cope in the middle of nowhere and if they’re waiting asylum seekers some of them might go walkabout.
“It’s an example of the government not having a clue what they are doing with these people and it’s not fair on the asylum seekers and refugees and it’s also not fair on the local community.
“It seems like a knee-jerk decision to dump refugees in the middle of nowhere”.
A Home Office spokesman said the response to the crisis in Afghanistan last August was one of the most challenging, intense and complex overseas operations undertaken by the UK, and the largest air evacuation operation in recent memory.
He added: “While hotels do not provide a long-term solution, they do offer safe, secure and clean accommodation. We will continue to bring down the number of people in bridging hotels, moving people into more sustainable accommodation as quickly as possible.”
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