‘Lots of fear’ from village residents over asylum hotel plan
A small village in West Northamptonshire is said to contain “a lot of anxiety” among residents over the prospect of up to 400 asylum seekers being housed in a hotel there. Creaton, near Northampton, has a population of just 500 people, and Home Office plans to use Highgate Hotel has drawn widespread criticism and concern. The Home Office informed West Northamptonshire Council (WNC) last December that it intended to use the 17th-century hotel as asylum contingency accommodation.
Both the council and Daventry MP, Chris Heaton-Harris, have called the plans “unacceptable” and “totally unsuitable”. Now, the chairman of Creaton Parish Council, James Hill, has told Northants Live that there was a “great deal of concern” among villagers over the “practicalities” of the plan. He also oulined what would be the “most disturbing outcome for people”.
READ MORE: Northampton Market to move to new location by end of the month after relocation plan is approved Some 150 villagers and other members of the public attended a meeting at Creaton Village Hall on Tuesday night, January 10. Also in attendance were representatives of WNC, including Councillor David Smith, cabinet member for community safety and engagement, alongside officers from Northamptonshire Police.
The event was a follow-up to a meeting last Tuesday, January 3, which saw around 70 village residents and representatives discuss the plans. Mr Heaton Harris said in a statement after that meeting that Highgate House was a “totally unsuitable location to place so many illegal migrants”. Mr Heaton-Harris was unable to attend the second meeting also, as he was in Northern Ireland, although Mr Hill said the MP’s office had been “heavily involved” in the situation.
In addition, the petition the MP had placed on his website to gather the opinions of residents received 450 responses by the time it closed on Tuesday evening, Mr Hill added. He said voices in the meeting ranged from “slightly politicised views” to those asking “how on earth is this place considered suitable for 400 asylum seekers?”. He also said that there was a “great deal of concern about how these people are identified and vetted”.
Mr Hill added: “I think if they’d said, ‘We’re housing 50 asylum seekers here’, then we’d be having a very different conversation. People are concerned whether there are criminals arriving in Creaton.” West Northants already houses more asylum seekers than anywhere in the East Midlands, with 630 housed in hotels across the area. WNC expressed “significant concern” when it announced just before Christmas that the Home Office intended to use the hotel.
Mr Hill said the thing people were struggling with most was “the practicalities of Highgate House and Creaton and the compatibility of a village of 500 people with a new population arriving of up to 400 from all over the world”. “We’ve got to somehow imagine what that would be like for the community,” he said. “It’s quite difficult. There’s a lot of anxiety, a lot of fear amongst the village.” Mr Hill said residents were concerned about the freedoms the migrants would be given in and around the village.
He said it had been confirmed that he migrants would be able to move freely, but the question of a curfew has not yet been answered.
A bedroom at Highgate House Hotel
Asylum hotels can house either families of migrants or single men. Mr Hill said the latter would be the “most disturbing outcome for people, because it’s not quite as savoury for some people”. He claimed the Home Office was “not responding to West Northants Council” and had not attended its weekly meeting with the council about asylum seekers in the area for the past fortnight.
He said WNC had not had any response to their questions relating to Highgate House. WNC has not yet confirmed Mr Hill’s claims. Creaton has sent a ‘pre-action’ letter to the Home Office, to which it must reply within 14 days.
A pre-action notice can be sent by anyone wishing to challenge a decision made by a local or national body, before whatever has been decided takes place. It lays out the argument and requests further information on the decision-making procedures, pursuant to a possible judicial review into the decision. Creaton’s argument is that WNC and the parish council were not consulted before the government made the proposal in December to use the hotel.
If or when the asylum seekers do move in, Mr Hill said, “we’ll bring in our local community groups, which have already volunteered to provide a “link of communication” to prevent an “‘us and them’ mentality”.
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