Milton Keynes: City council opposes M1 migrant hotel plan

Plans to house migrants near a motorway services site are "incredibly dangerous", a city council has claimed.

The Home Office wants to place up to 250 families in a hotel close to the M1 services at Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire.

It comes weeks after plans to use the nearby Harben House Hotel fell through due to the owner's criminal record.

The Home Office said it was "working hard to reduce the unacceptable use of hotels".

Labour-run Milton Keynes City Council said the move could expose vulnerable people to exploitation.

It said it was "made aware of the plans in an email" and has now submitted a formal objection.

Last month, plans to house migrants in the Harben House Hotel in Newport Pagnell were suspended after a BBC investigation revealed its owner, Siddharth Mahajan, was convicted of offences linked to the operation of houses of multiple occupancy (HMOs).

The authority said it had "raised concerns that placing vulnerable people on a busy motorway junction would put them at risk to people smugglers, exploitation and be at higher danger of absconding."

The council said there were significant pressures on local authority housing with more than 800 local homeless families currently in temporary accommodation at a cost of £16m a year.

The Home Office said the cost of housing migrants in hotels had risen to £8m a day.

The Conservative MP for Milton Keynes North, Ben Everitt, has called for a full investigation into the Harben House Hotel issue "after the current cohort of asylum seekers are processed".

"Over the summer I called out both the Home Office and MK Council over their handling of asylum accommodation in our area," he said.

"The Government is clear that we do not want to be housing asylum seekers in hotels.

"We are clear. People who come to our country illegally should be detained and removed."

The city council leader, Labour's Pete Marland, said: "Placing vulnerable people next to a busy motorway service station is a terrible idea.

"It raises all sorts of safety issues regarding people smugglers and risk of absconding. It's incredibly dangerous."

He added: "The people of Milton Keynes are generous and have a long history of supporting asylum seekers in their time of need.

"There has obviously been no assessment done on the site or how using it will impact those being moved there, or the wider local community. It's a bad idea and we will oppose it."

In a statement, the Home Office said it was "working hard to reduce the unacceptable use of hotels by moving asylum seekers into alternative, cheaper accommodation, doubling them up in hotel rooms, and clearing the legacy backlog."

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