Norfolk hotel for asylum families asks for 'understanding'
The Home Office told the BBC it was discussing the issue with the council and local MP.
The hotel said: "The Park Hotel has been contracted by the Home Office to provide accommodation for families."This arrangement presently remains in place, despite recent public statements suggesting otherwise."We have advised the Home Office and other stakeholders that should this situation change, and we are formally notified that the hotel will no longer operate as a family-only establishment, we will have no alternative but to close the hotel."
Monday's protest began just after 17:30 BST, with about 60 people standing opposite the hotel with shouts of "we want our country back".They were met by about 30 counter-protesters holding signs reading "refugees welcome".The original protest grew in number to about 150 people, delivering speeches and chanting "send them home".Green Party MP for Waveney Valley Adrian Ramsay said he had raised concerns with the Home Office about its plans but said the protest that took place was "wrong"."Groups from outside our community came here to create fear and division," he said in a statement."That is not who we are. Diss is a town rooted in compassion and decency."
Ramsay said the asylum hotel had been running for two years "without any issues", but he was "frustrated" at a sudden potential change in use."The families staying here have become part of the local community, with many of their children attending local schools," he said."However, late last week we were informed that these families would be told to leave the hotel at short notice".South Norfolk Council said it would be meeting with the Home Office on Friday and claimed the proposed change "came out of the blue"."We are hoping that the Home Office, at that meeting if not before, will officially reverse its decision and let the families living in the Park Hotel stay in the town that welcomed them so warmly two years ago," it said.The authority has no overall control but its biggest group of councillors (23) are Conservative, including the council's leader, Daniel Elmer
The hotel added: "We ask for understanding and sensitivity from both the public and the media during this time, as we continue to provide support to those in our accommodation."A Home Office spokeswoman previously told the BBC the asylum system was under "unprecedented strain"."That was the situation the government inherited, but we have begun to restore order," she said.The Home Office has been contacted for comment.
Follow Norfolk news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
South Wales Guardian
7 minutes ago
- South Wales Guardian
Peaceful protest outside Epping asylum hotel
Essex Police said a group of people protesting against The Bell Hotel in Epping formed at about 6pm on Thursday. Officers then facilitated a march in the town's High Street, by the same group, and no arrests were made. Multiple demonstrations have been held outside The Bell Hotel since July 13 after an asylum seeker was charged with allegedly attempting to kiss a 14-year-old girl. Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, 38, who was charged with sexual assault, denies the charges. He is due to stand trial in August. Chief Superintendent Simon Anslow said: 'The calm and peaceful nature of tonight's protest meant that we have not arrested anyone during the march, and I want to thank those who attended and made that possible. 'As a force, we will continue to facilitate the right to protest when it is both peaceful and lawful.' Police put a dispersal order in place ahead of the protest from 3pm on Thursday to 8am on Friday, giving officers the power to direct anyone suspected of committing anti-social behaviour to leave the area. A Section 60AA order, which prevents people from wearing face coverings, is also in place from 3pm on Thursday until 3pm on Friday. Essex Police previously said 14 people have been charged in connection with recent protests at the site and there have been 23 arrests. Concerns about the use of the Bell Hotel to house asylum seekers were expressed in an open letter sent to the Home Secretary from political leaders in Essex on Wednesday. In the letter, the politicians say housing migrants at the site is 'proving to be entirely unsuitable' and 'placing an unsustainable strain on police resources'. Protesters also gathered outside the Stanwell Hotel in Spelthorne, Surrey on Thursday. Spelthorne Borough Council previously said it had 'expressed strong opposition' to the Home Office's intention to change the client group at the hotel to provide only for male asylum seekers. In a letter to the Home Secretary, Councillor Joanne Sexton said the council was 'determined to avoid circumstances that could lead to civil unrest'. Spelthorne Borough Council said on Thursday that the Home Office had agreed to speak to the council on Friday to 'discuss the proposals in greater detail'. In a statement, the council said: 'We want to reassure residents that the council is fully aware of the concerns expressed by the community and is committed to raising these directly with the Home Office during the meeting.'
Western Telegraph
7 minutes ago
- Western Telegraph
Peaceful protest outside Epping asylum hotel
Essex Police said a group of people protesting against The Bell Hotel in Epping formed at about 6pm on Thursday. Officers then facilitated a march in the town's High Street, by the same group, and no arrests were made. Multiple demonstrations have been held outside The Bell Hotel since July 13 after an asylum seeker was charged with allegedly attempting to kiss a 14-year-old girl. Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, 38, who was charged with sexual assault, denies the charges. He is due to stand trial in August. Chief Superintendent Simon Anslow said: 'The calm and peaceful nature of tonight's protest meant that we have not arrested anyone during the march, and I want to thank those who attended and made that possible. 'As a force, we will continue to facilitate the right to protest when it is both peaceful and lawful.' Police put a dispersal order in place ahead of the protest from 3pm on Thursday to 8am on Friday, giving officers the power to direct anyone suspected of committing anti-social behaviour to leave the area. A Section 60AA order, which prevents people from wearing face coverings, is also in place from 3pm on Thursday until 3pm on Friday. Essex Police previously said 14 people have been charged in connection with recent protests at the site and there have been 23 arrests. Concerns about the use of the Bell Hotel to house asylum seekers were expressed in an open letter sent to the Home Secretary from political leaders in Essex on Wednesday. In the letter, the politicians say housing migrants at the site is 'proving to be entirely unsuitable' and 'placing an unsustainable strain on police resources'. Protesters also gathered outside the Stanwell Hotel in Spelthorne, Surrey on Thursday. Spelthorne Borough Council previously said it had 'expressed strong opposition' to the Home Office's intention to change the client group at the hotel to provide only for male asylum seekers. In a letter to the Home Secretary, Councillor Joanne Sexton said the council was 'determined to avoid circumstances that could lead to civil unrest'. Spelthorne Borough Council said on Thursday that the Home Office had agreed to speak to the council on Friday to 'discuss the proposals in greater detail'. In a statement, the council said: 'We want to reassure residents that the council is fully aware of the concerns expressed by the community and is committed to raising these directly with the Home Office during the meeting.'
The Guardian
16 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Is this tough US-EU trade deal a triumph for Brexit Britain? Only in leavers' most delusional fantasies
Those who misled the country over Brexit are usually quieter these days. They do not hang their heads in shame, but change the subject whenever they can. They deflect with their new war-cry that Britain must also leave the European convention on human rights. As the effects of their wicked Brexit folly worsen by the month, they rarely get a chance to whoop: 'We were right!' So their glee was unrestrained when the great US global bully gave Britain a less hard beating with a 10% tariff on its goods, compared with the EU, which was walloped with 15%. Their joy overflowed when the business and trade secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, conceded: 'I'm absolutely clear, this is a benefit of being out of the European Union, having our independent trade policy, absolutely no doubt about that.' But what else can a trade secretary, speaking through gritted teeth, actually say? In his attempts to attract foreign investment, he can hardly tell the truth about the damage done by leaving the EU. These advocates of Brexit should gloat while they can. When the French prime minister called the EU's deal with Donald Trump a 'soumission' (submission), Kwasi Kwarteng seized on the word in a piece for the Telegraph, writing: 'For the French, with their memories of capitulation to the Nazis in 1940, the word is even more associated with abject humiliation than it is in English.' Yes, that's the same Kwarteng who hurled the British economy over a cliff only three years ago. 'This trade deal is the EU's greatest humiliation since Britain voted to leave', read the headline on his column. But he would never confess that the difference between a 10% and 15% tariff with the US is minimal, since we trade twice as much with the EU as the US. It barely equates to the regular variation in exchange rates: in other words, it's 'a rounding error', the Centre for European Reform's trade expert, John Springford, told me, when compared with the hammer blow Britain gave itself with Brexit. The UK-India trade deal signed with the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, last week was greeted with another Brexiter whoop from the Conservative peer Daniel Hannan. Also writing in the Telegraph, he said: 'My party, and Brexiteers more widely, should be taking credit for having done what all the clever Europhiles have spent six years telling us was impossible. Instead of moaning, we should welcome Starmer's belated understanding that world's biggest and fastest-growing markets are outside the EU.' But the Tory leader took another view: 'Keir Starmer called this 'historic.' It's not historic, we've just been shafted!' Kemi Badenoch said, dismissing the India agreement as a bad deal that would increase immigration. I don't know whether clever men like Kwarteng and Hannan are blinded by Brexit monomania or paralysed by the awful knowledge of the damage they have inflicted on their country, unable to confess an act of treachery and delusion hardly matched in British history. But as ever, facts are too inconvenient for them to deal with. Yes, the India deal is the biggest and most substantial trade deal since leaving the EU. Yes, it's a deal that would have been impossible to do from inside the union. But how big is it? It will add 0.13% to our economy. That's better than the Australia agreement, worth just 0.08%, the New Zealand deal, worth 0.03%, or the proposed US agreement, worth 0.16%, according to Department for Business and Trade analysis. But our fragile economy needs all the help it can get, so hurrah for Brexit and our new trade deals! But the gloaters ignore the context: our great Brexit losses. Here's the Office for Budget Responsibility's assessment: 'Our forecasts have assumed that the volume of UK imports and exports will both be 15% lower than if we had remained in the EU.' That 15% loss in trade 'will lead to a 4% reduction in the potential productivity of the UK economy'. In other words, as Jonty Bloom of the New World calculates, we need 50 India trade deals to make up for Brexit, because Britain does more than 40% of its trade with the EU – more if you include the European Economic Area and Switzerland. India has just 2% of our trade. Brexiters bleat that Labour is sneaking us into the EU by the back door, with deals on Horizon, the EU's research and innovation funding programme; soon, hopefully, Erasmus; and maybe a youth experience scheme. We hope for agricultural products and energy deals. But even these, say the trade experts, are still small potatoes. Major attempts to rescue Britain's 4% loss in productivity since 2020 hit the concrete walls of Boris Johnson's monumentally bad trade and cooperation agreement. Brexit zealots protest against agreements to keep a dynamic alignment with EU standards that would make trade easier. But it doesn't apply to our internal environmental standards: outside EU rules, we have let our water quality fall behind the EU. More than 85% of bathing waters in the EU are rated excellent compared with just 64% in the UK, with the gap rising every year, reports the European Movement. Public opinion has shifted rapidly: we are now a 'Bregretful' country, where only 31% still think it was right to leave and 61% say Brexit has been more of a failure than a success. Who do they blame? The Conservatives and Boris Johnson are top of the list, with 88% and 84% respectively holding them responsible. More than two-thirds (67%) blame Nigel Farage. A majority of Britons (56%) want to rejoin the EU as the grim reaper carries off old Brexiters, replacing them with young, pro-European voters. Don't expect bolder moves from the Labour government in its current frame of mind. Though defence and security draw us towards ever closer union, public opinion is not to be trusted. If people were confronted now with actual re-entry terms – paying in, free movement, joining the euro, no special deals – their answers might change. The mood might also be different if the far right continues its gains in EU countries, dividing the union's values. What might it take to throw off the economic, political and psychological darkness of Brexit? A clever – or Cleverly? – new Tory leader daring to break with the past, confessing the error of Brexit and taking us back into the EU, once and for all. It may take another generation to recover. Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
