The danger of putting migrants in warehouse ghettos

So far the UK has managed to avoid the kind of clashes between asylum seekers and local residents that blight other European countries. Our workforce is now 19 per cent immigrant – an even higher percentage than America’s. But this relative harmony might soon be threatened.

Since 2018 the processing backlog for asylum seekers has grown to a staggering size, thanks to the Home Office’s failures, Covid lockdowns and, to a lesser degree, a recent rise in the number of Channel crossings. The existing accommodation stock is overflowing – with 37,000 migrants being put up in hotels at a cost of £4 million a day.

The Home Office needs an urgent solution, but the one it has found is far from ideal. Small towns and rural communities are being told they must host ‘processing centres’ and/or house asylum seekers – leaving desperate, bewildered migrants, who are banned from working, stranded in the countryside.

It was recently announced that my own small town of Stafford in the West Midlands has been chosen as the location for a dedicated accommodation centre for up to around 500 asylum seekers. The plan is to convert an old student digs called Stafford Court, with 170 migrants staying for initial processing and another 310 living there longer-term. The decision has been presented to locals as a fait accompli by Serco, the company contracted to handle it all.

Unsurprisingly, Stafford residents are livid. The council’s website is currently groaning under the weight of furious emails from people objecting to the planning application. Some of the anger even appears to have been neutered for public consumption. Several responses published online have been ‘redacted’ by Stafford council with a thick black marker. One email reads: ‘Please stop this Serco [REDACTED] from going through and [REDACTED] the lives of local people along the way.’