A Home Office plan to use a Bolton hotel to house asylum seekers has been reversed after the local council intervened.
Bolton’s acting council leader, Martyn Cox, said the council had fought off the intention of Home Office, through Serco, to procure the Britannia Hotel to house asylum seekers.
Serco have provided housing and support for asylum seekers in the UK since 2012 while they await news on their immigration status.
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Conservative group leader Coun Cox is set to be elected leader of Bolton Council on Wednesday, August 25, following the passing last month of Coun David Greenhalgh, who died while in office.
Coun Cox said the Britannia Hotel, which is around three miles outside the town centre on Beaumont Road and has 96 rooms, is currently used by Bolton Council to provide emergency accommodation for local people and families and he claimed the government would in effect be ‘turfing out homeless people’ if they proceeded.
He also called for a more ‘fair and equitable distribution’ of asylum seekers and refugees across the country saying the boroughs of Bolton and Rochdale had previously accepted more than the whole of the South East region, bar London, combined.
He said the hotel issues has highlighted the risks of housing asylum seekers in a handful of towns.
He said: “We received a message from the Home Office asking if we can take in asylum seekers.
“We responded we have done a huge amount over the years to support those asylum seekers, many not seeking sanctuary but are in fact economic migrants, and Bolton just cannot take in any more.
“When we were told the Home Office had procured, through Serco, the Britannia Hotel and asylum seekers were going to be placed in the hotel we called for a meeting and explained that in effect the Home Office
would be turfing out homeless people.
“Once we put this argument forward the Home Office backed down.
“I am pleased the Home Office official listened.
“The wider point is not that the Britannia Hotel was inappropriate to house asylum seekers, but that Bolton has done more than its fair share.
“The Government needs to give Bolton time and space to assimilate the people we have taken in so different cultures can integrate and become one community, not a series of separate communities
where tensions are stoked and regeneration becomes more difficult.
“People seeking asylum are not allowed to work, so their ability to contribute to our town and services is limited.”
Coun Cox said it was important not to conflate the situation of the hotel with any future programme for assimilating refugees fleeing Afghanistan.
He said: “It’s our belief that the hotel would have been used for those crossing the Channel.
“We will comment on any government programme for the Afghan situation once it has been agreed.”
This year, the council passed a budget which included £36M of cuts to staffing and services over the next two years.
Coun Cox added that he was ‘desperate to regenerate this town and transform its fortunes’ and to do that ‘we need stability in the population and a community which is able to contribute’.
He said: “We are asking for a fair and equitable distribution of asylum seekers and that the Home Office does not consider Bolton as its first stop .”
The Home Office has been approached for comment.
