Northallerton: Plan to house asylum seekers close to PM's home

Plans to house asylum seekers in a hotel close to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's home have been criticised.

The plans to move people into a site near Northallerton mean Ukrainian families living at the hotel have been asked to leave, campaigners said.

Hambleton District Council has raised concerns. The hotel is close to Mr Sunak's North Yorkshire home.

But a Home Office spokesperson said they were assured that no Ukrainians or homeless people lived at the hotel.

Campaigners said seven Ukrainian and two British families have been asked to leave the hotel.

They said the families will be relocated to Stockton-on-Tees and parts of County Durham to make way for people to move from a migrant processing centre in Manston, Kent.

They said six weddings had also been cancelled at the venue as a result of the proposals.

A spokesperson for the council said: "This decision has been made following a meeting between Hambleton District Council and the Home Office where concerns were raised around this proposal due to this hotel already being used, albeit on a limited basis, to temporarily house homeless people in Hambleton but more frequently to house Ukrainian families.

"Despite the concerns raised, the Home Office has confirmed their intention to go ahead with the proposal."

They said the council does not intend to pursue legal action against the decision.

A Home Office spokesperson said the asylum seekers had not yet taken occupancy of the site and that the use of hotels is a "short-term solution".

They said the government was working with councils to "find appropriate accommodation" and added: "The number of people arriving in the UK who require accommodation has reached record levels and has put our asylum system under incredible strain."

Nicola David, chairwoman of the charity Ripon City of Sanctuary, which supports asylum seekers, said: "The Home Office talks about an invasion of migrants, which is awful language, but what they've done is invaded people's lives up here.

"People are being moved out of area, people are being turfed out of their emergency accommodation, people's wedding plans are being invaded because, basically, the Home Office doesn't care.

"They just come down from above without consultation and without warning."

She said she understood that the new arrivals would not come to the hotel until later this month to allow one wedding, which was deemed too late to cancel, to go ahead.

Hambleton District Council mounted a legal challenge against a Home Office plan to house up to 1,500 asylum seekers at a disused RAF base at Linton-on-Ouse earlier this year.

This plan was scrapped in August.

Follow BBC Yorkshire on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Send your story ideas to [email protected].