On 31st August 2023 it was announced by Huw Merriman MP that the Northeye site in Bexhill has been confirmed for use as a Detention Centre, rather than the initially proposed Accommodation Centre.

We are incredibly disappointed by this decision and shocked to hear both Huw Merriman and other local campaigners describe this as a victory. We have worked in Bexhill for several years and have a great deal of support for people seeking refuge from local people who consider this a humanitarian issue.
We have worked in Bexhill for several years and have a great deal of support for people seeking refuge from local people who consider this a humanitarian issue. In championing this decision, Mr Merriman seems to be only representing a small yet loud minority of constituents who are basing their increasingly racist arguments on totally unfounded concerns.

We already had serious concerns about the use of Northeye as an Accommodation Centre. Such centres across the country, including Napier Barracks and Manston in our neighbouring Kent County have been an absolute disaster for the people placed there, with reports from residents and national charities and agencies confirming the appalling conditions, including people sleeping on cardboard on floors, lack of access to hygiene facilities, poor quality food, and outbreaks of serious health conditions.

More recently, the debacle with the Bibby Stockholm barge in Portland has brought to light the Home Office’s lack of due diligence in terms of the legionnaires present in the water system, and its failure to heed safety warning which has now resulted in the Fire Brigades Union taking it to Court.

Detention Centres have a similarly terrible record, such as the infamous Yarl’s Wood centre in Bedfordshire which was the subject of several damning reports, and as of the latest report in 2022 is still housing vulnerable people, despite Home Office policy to the contrary.

We therefore have no confidence in the government’s ability to manage their facilities in a humane way.
Despite the scapegoating of people seeking asylum and the Illegal Migration Act which recently passed, the UK has international responsibilities under The Refugee Convention to hear and consider the claims of people seeking asylum in this country. While doing so it has a duty to treat people with the respect and humanity they deserve.

There are also significant questions to be raised over the potential cost of this detention site. The update from Huw Merriman states that to meet the requirements of the new designation as a detention site, the existing buildings will all need to be demolished and new ones built in their place. There is currently a lack of housing across the country, and this is being felt keenly across the whole of East Sussex. We suggest that the millions of pounds this project is going to cost would be far better spent on affordable community housing.

We are very clear: our position on the use of the Northeye site to house people seeking refuge has not changed. We are completely against this plan, which will see people seeking refuge detained in terrible conditions with little to no access to the support and services they require.

Signed

The Refugee Buddy Project Hastings Rother and Wealden
Hastings Community of Sanctuary
Hastings Supports Refugees

Hello Everyone

We’re writing to update you on the latest news from our Community Not Camps Campaign.

Hastings Hotel
Since we met last met, the hotel in Hastings continues to house people seeking refuge, with more than 10 new men being moved in in just the last two weeks. These new residents are mostly new arrivals, and are arriving with only the clothes they are standing in and having had personal belongings removed from them by border guards. We are again in the position of giving our sets of clothes and providing replacement phones for people who have nothing, as well as assisting them to claim the small financial support they are entitled to. Among this new group is yet another Unaccompanied Minor who is now undergoing age assessment with East Sussex County Council.

There is some good news – many of the original cohort of men have now received their ID cards and are receiving the £9.10 per week from the Home Office. We have also had some success with finding solicitors and legal advisors, but this is still only for a relatively small number of people.

We continue to run informal ESOL classes thanks to our wonderful volunteers, as well as facilitating medical and legal appointments and just this week have been handing footballs and playing cards at the request of our participants. Some have registered at the local college too.

We also continue to raise the ongoing issues in the hotel with the local and County Council, the Home Office and their contractors Clear Springs.

Northeye Site, Bexhill
As many of you will have seen, the Home Office is in the process of purchasing a site in Bexhill known as Northeye with the intention to relocate 1200 men there from this coming September. We are collaborating with Hastings Community of Sanctuary, Hastings Supports Refugees and Hastings Stand Up To Racism to resist this plan, and attach here our campaign outline.

Our campaign is based on the humanitarian reasons why this detention camp should not enacted. We know that camps are detrimental to the mental and physical health of residents and that in-community accommodation, though not without its flaws, is a far better solution.

We encourage all of you to write to your MP – whether that is Huw Merriman who represents Bexhill or Sally-Ann Hart in Hastings – and urge them to lobby the Government not to pursue this incredibly troubling plan. Further down this page you will find the letter we sent Huw Merriman last month - please feel free to use any of the points for your own letter!

We attended the Bexhill Town Council meeting on 26th April and one of our Bexhill Buddies spoke up and invited people towork with us to stop use of Northeye. Our buddy was heckled but maintained her position and spoke clearly and eloquently. We have received many calls and message of support from people who asking to work with us as a result of this meeting.

We are also working with our volunteers to campaign against this and have conversations with local residents and campaigners in Bexhill to ensure that the needs of people seeking refuge are centred in this campaign. If you want to join us in this please contact us.

Last but not least, look out for our Refugee Week 2023 events coming up 18-25th June. There is lots for you to do, volunteer or just come and enjoy and take part. The theme this year is Compassion - we need this now more than ever.

In solidarity
The Refugee Buddy Project

REFUGEES WELCOME – NO TO NORTHEYE

The Home Office has identified the Northeye ex-military camp outside Bexhill, East Sussex as a potential site to accommodate people seeking asylum in the UK.

Three Voluntary and Community Sector organisations who have been active in the area for several years – The Refugee Buddy Project: Hastings, Rother & Wealden (TRBP), Stand Up To Racism (SUTR) and Hastings Community of Sanctuary (HCoS) – have met to discuss our response.

Our message is that refugees and people seeking asylum are welcome in the UK and in this area, however the proposal to accommodate people in camps such as Northeye is inhumane and also inappropriate for the areas that will be impacted. We believe that people should be treated with dignity and compassion, and given the opportunity to work to contribute and be part of local communities while they wait for their asylum claims to be processed. We are therefore opposed to the Northeye camp. The Communities Not Camps campaign began in Hastings in 2022 as a response to the opening of a Home Office emergency hotel. We continue to campaign against the use of this hotel and for the full dispersal of all the men held there into in-community accommodation, and are extending our Communities Not Camps campaign to cover Northeye camp as well.
We are inviting people to contribute to three campaign strands:

Activist Anti-racism – including running stalls in Bexhill, door knocking and counter protests if the Far Right organise locally – SUTR coordinating – hastingssutr@gmail.com

Engagement – building relationships with local people and groups, creating understanding and changing ‘hearts & minds’ – TRBP coordinating – info@therefugeebuddyproject.org

Technical campaign – the Linton on Ouse site was defeated on planning grounds led by a small group with necessary expertise in areas like planning, legal and media relations – HCoS coordinating the convening of this group locally – info@hastings.cityofsanctuary.org

Roles / expertise needed for the Technical campaign:

Local authorities’ liaison – district, county

MP liaison

Research – into a huge range of subjects

Media co-ordination, writing of press releases/briefings, building relationships

Media spokesperson•Asylum sector understanding/VCS liaison

Legal avenues

Design & print – banners, posters

Social media

If you have the passion, skills and time to contribute to one (or more) of the campaign strands, please get in touch with the relevant organisation on the emails above.

Dear Mr Merriman

We write regarding the proposal by the Home Office to use the Northeye Residential and Training Establishment.

The Refugee Buddy Project works across Hastings, Rother and Wealden and has been working in Bexhill since 2018 matching residents with newly arrived people seeking refuge on a voluntary basis to help them acclimatize to and thrive in their new lives in the town. We have worked with around 100 volunteers in this time and supported over 50 individuals who have arrived on a variety of routes, including the Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Programme and more recently Homes for Ukraine. We also work closely with statutory and cultural organisations such as the De La Warr Pavilion and Rother District Council to both support those seeking refuge and improve public awareness of the issues they face.

The success of these two schemes has been in large part down to the way in which people seeking refuge have been embraced by their local community, especially by being housed in and by the community.

We are very concerned, therefore, about the proposal to use the Northeye site to house around 1200 individuals seeking refuge.

We have been campaigning for months about the poor treatment of people kept in hotels both in Hastings and across East Sussex, and have seen first hand the substandard provision provided by the Home Office and its contractors in these accommodation centres. From poor quality and culturally inappropriate food and lack of access to fresh drinking water to lack of cleaning facilities for clothing and irregular cleaning of bedrooms and bathrooms, the treatment of vulnerable people seeking refuge is horrendous. This plan to use poor quality mass accommodation sites will only exacerbate the issues we see already in hotels across the County.

Hotels across the country have also become flashpoints for protests and violence as seen in places like Knowsley and Skegness. The Northeye site will undoubtedly become a target for such protests putting the people living in and around the site in danger.

People seeking refuge deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, and to be housed in community accommodation where they can live alongside their neighbours. Isolating and segregating people in this type of camp amounts to the internment of large numbers of innocent people. The UK is better than this. Bexhill is better than this.

We are asking you, as the local MP for this area, to call on the Home Office to:

Immediately scrap its plans for accommodation centres in Northeye and across of the UK.

Redouble its efforts to increase the availability of safe asylum accommodation in flats and houses within local communities.

Work collaboratively with communities and local authorities and provide adequate funding to enable them to welcome people seeking safety.

We would welcome a meeting with you to discuss this matter further.

Yours sincerely

Rossana Leal
CEO
The Refugee Buddy Project: Hastings Rother and Wealden

Prepared and read by Alex Kempton, Director of Operations and Campaigns

I’m going to give you a brief overview of the use of hotel accommodation by the Home Office, and then go on to give an overview of the situation we found at the hotel here in Hastings. I’ll finish with the situation now and what we are doing to advocate for the men.

Background
The use of hotels to house people seeking asylum has been a long standing policy of the Home Office. At the end of 2021 the Refugee Council notes that around 26,380 were living in this type of accommodation including over 2500 children.

The use of hotels to house people is supposed to be a temporary measure – these Initial Accommodation centres are supposed to house people seeking asylum who informed the Home Office that they are destitute and so unable to house themselves. The accommodation is supposed to last no longer than around 3 months before people are dispersed into community accommodation around the country.

This community accommodation is provided around the country and – until last year – operated only in areas which had opted into the programme, which was fewer than half of all local authority areas in the UK - although this has now been changed to a mandatory programme – ie local authorities no longer opt in and cannot opt out. The numbers in any given area are usually reflective of the population of the area, so for example the numbers of people on this scheme in Hastings is lower than that in Glasgow.

This three-month limit in housing people in hotels is very much a guideline, however, and The Refugee Council highlighted in 2021 that 378 people have been in hotel rooms for a year and 2,826 for more than six months. We know from colleagues across the country including London, Eastbourne and Crawley that the length of stay for many people is increasing and the data for 2022 is likely to show an increase not only in the number of people housed in this way but also in the length of time they are being subjected to this type of accommodation.

Many of these Initial Accommodation centres have become Contingency Accommodation centres – thus allowing them to be used for longer periods of time. The term Contingency Accommodation also covers the use of properties like Napier Barracks. This type of contingency accommodation is not restricted to people seeking asylum – it is also used for people who have arrived from Afghanistan on the resettlement programme announced by the government in 2021. Some people are still in the hotels they were placed in in 2021 when they arrived in the UK, so the Home Office is clearly comfortable with leaving people in situ for extended periods.

These hotels are a very clear implementation of the hostile environment in which people seeking refuge are subjected to appalling conditions simply for claiming refuge.

There are several factors involved for the increase of the use of hotels. The most significant of these is the backlog in the Home Office dealing with asylum applications. According to the UNHCR, as of November 2022 there were 127,421 pending asylum cases in the UK. While the Home Office states that the most people will receive their asylum decision within 6 months, a report on the 2021 data by the Refugee Council showed that the average wait time was between 1 and 3 years. In this time, people are – for the most part – not allowed to work, they will not be able to seek private accommodation or be eligible for local authority accommodation and so they must stay in the dispersal accommodation given to them by the Home Office. This enormous backlog has therefore led to an increased need for in-community dispersal accommodation which the Home Office is choosing to rectify by the increased use of hotels.

Another factor is the use of processing centres. In October 2022, after the media and public got wind of the disgraceful conditions at Manston where around 4000 people were being held by the Home Office, there was a Ministerial Directive to empty the centre. This led to people being moved out into hotel accommodation across the Country as this was the quickest way of complying with the Directive. It was not, however, in any way a decision which was in the best interest of the people affected.
It is well established by a variety of research that long term stays in this type of accommodation leads to increased mental health issues among people seeking refuge, including high rates of depression and suicidal thoughts.

Contractors
The Home Office contracts out all asylum accommodation to private companies. In the South-East this is Clearsprings Ready Homes, in other parts of the country it is SERCO and Mears.
While in this Initial or Contingency Accommodation people are only entitled to £9.10 per week (until January 2023 this was £8.45) as they are, in theory at least, in full board accommodation and being provided with all their food, hygiene needs along with travel to any GP, dentist or hospital appointments.
The sub-contractor claims publicly to be providing all of the above, but the situation we are seeing here in Hastings is not reflective of that.

Hastings Hotel
The hotel in hastings began use as an Emergency Hotel in November 2022.

We became first visited the hotel on 9th November having become aware of it the day before. At the time we believed the hotel had opened the previous weekend, but it later became apparent that it had been open for around 1 week before we visited.

We visited the hotel with interpreters and spoke with many of the residents. We registered many of them and conducted initial needs assessments. All of them were in need of legal representation, and we made are aware of at least 3 who needed urgent medical appointments, including one with concerning mental health issues.

We were there for most of the morning, leaving at about 12 pm and their breakfast had still not arrived, and they had had no food or drink besides water all morning.
Our individual needs assessments established they all the men needed warm clothes, including shoes as many of them are still wearing flip flops, they needed personal hygiene supplies, and some of them did not have telephones as they had been taken from them at Dover by the Home Office. None appeared to be in receipt of financial support the Home Office - despite being to entitled to this in hotels prior to arrival in Hastings - which meant they had absolutely no money.

We also established that there were some young people there who ages had been assessed by the Home Office as in their 20s, but they told us that that they were under 18 and we believe them based on initial interactions. At the time, ESCC Social Services were dealing with all of the UASC we were aware of.

From our point of view, legal advice and representation was a priority in order to ensure that these men were aware of their legal rights. Secondly, was the urgency of the medical needs and being seen by GPs. Most of the men had been in the UK at least one month, some up to three months, yet none of them had seen a medical professional. Medical screening is supposed to be done at Port and again when put into hotels but this had simply not happened. Many of the men had injuries sustained during the journeys, some had broken bones, many had skin issues including scabies and other rashes, some had heart conditions which they did not have medication for. All of this had been ignored by the Home Office.

We continued to attend the hotel to register the men and conduct needs assessments with them, and became aware of more unaccompanied asylum seeking children. At this point we began to contact ESCC directly regarding these cases – no one from social services had then or has at any point since entered the hotel to assess whether there were any age disputes, nor did they provide any support in transporting the children to and from their age assessments. The nine children who have been removed from the Hastings hotel have been facilitated by us, a small charitable organisation.

We have worked with the local statutory services throughout this time and I just want to take a minute to highlight the incredible work of the local NHS services. From registering the men in a kind and welcoming environment to providing full screening, vaccinations and ongoing support including referrals for mental health service, they really have been fantastic.

We continued to visit the hotel and the men began to attend our offices to register and have the initial needs assessments done which we have to date completed for over 80 men. We partnered with Hastings Community of Sanctuary and Hastings Supports Refugees to provide clothing for the men as well as purchasing items such as hygiene packs, replacement phones, tobacco, hair clippers, ear phones and more. We also assisted the men in attending GP and hospital appointments and getting them registered with dentists.
We also continue to advocate for the men at the regular County wide meetings which include representatives from all the Borough and District Councils in East Sussex where hotels are based, the Home Office, Clearspings and the South East Strategic Migration Partnership. At these meetings we brought up the issues which the men had brought to us prior to the meeting including ongoing issues with the quality of the food, mould and leaks in their rooms, overcrowding, lack of access to drinking water, inconsistent laundry services leaving men in the same set of clothes for weeks on end and more.

We also reported all of our concerns to Hastings Borough Council, the Home Office and Clearspings directly in letters and emails.

The situation now
The situation is largely unchanged.

The food is still substandard and continues to be supplemented by local business, charities and individuals. There has been an incredible community response, including many of you in the room today, to come together and welcome these new arrivals to our town. These stories of kindness and welcome don’t make the press as often as those which talk about protests, but we are so proud to be in a town where this sort of solidarity and welcome is taking place.

The majority of the men still do have their ID cards or their ASPEN cards which give them access to the little money they are entitled to; three months on they are still coming to us for basic necessities like toothbrushes which is just dehumanising and demeaning.

What we are now seeing is that this hostile policy is deliberate, the men are placed in isolated places and in hotels in an effort to confuse the narrative so that unless you tell them otherwise people think they are languishing in 5* hotels.

Given the levels of right-wing protests, they are now sitting ducks for the violence which we are seeing now right across the country. This is causing anxiety not only for the men who are quite rightly anxious about their own safety, but also for the wider community of people and businesses who are invested in ensuring the safety of the men. This is why we wrote to the Police and Crime Commissioner Katy Bourne to ask for reassurances that the Police locally were prepared for any such protest, a letter which was co-signed by over 120 local people.

Her response did not fill us with much confidence so we must continue to put pressure on those in power to ensure the safety of our community.

So we are campaigning to those in power to advocate on behalf of the men, we are asking for them to be dispersed to community housing which, despite its problems, is better than this situation. We understand that statutory services have their own remits, and that’s why we are asking them to do what is within their remit to put pressure on the Home Office to disperse these men.

Open letter to Katie Bourne, Police and Crime Commissioner for Sussex

Dear Ms Bourne

We write jointly as local charitable organisations, businesses and residents of Hastings following the horrific scenes in Mersyside on Friday 10th February 2023 when protestors gathered outside the Suite Hotel in Knowsley, currently being used by the Home Office to house people seeking refuge.

This awful incident comes off the back of months of divisive and inflammatory language by politicians and the media which has claimed that the people in these hotels are in some way living in luxury.

This language has trickled down to extremists who have now coalesced around a mission to actively call people to protest at these hotels across the country.

This is clearly and openly evidenced by the Facebook pages of such groups as The Democratic Football Fans Alliance and Hotels Housing Illegals.

As you will be aware, there are currently several hotels across Sussex being used by the Home Office to house people seeking refuge. Following the events on Friday evening, Ms Claire Carr - the Hastings Borough Council Councillor whose ward currently contains one of these hotels - spoke directly to the staff who have been tasked with managing this hotel.

Concerningly, they had no idea that such an incident had taken place, nor had they received any information from their employers about how to manage a situation similar to what took place in Merseyside. Ms Carr gave them some basic security advice and went on to speak to the local Police to try to establish what plans were in place should this terrible situation arise.

The voluntary sector in Hastings has rallied the community response to welcome our new neighbours housed in this hotel, and we are now being approached by residents and local businesses who are frankly terrified of a repeat of the Mersyside scenes in our town.
We write to ask you, as Police and Crime Commissioner, what you have done to ensure that Sussex Police are actively responding to this significant threat, and reassure local people that there are plans in place to deal with any such incident, including adequate briefing of hotel staff and a clear evacuation procedure.

Signed

The Refugee Buddy Project
Hastings Community of Sanctuary
Hastings Supports Refugees