Latest news with #CanaryWharf
Bloomberg
6 hours ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
HSBC Has Shut a Quarter of Floors in Canary Wharf Tower
Even as HSBC Holdings Plc pushes staff to return to the office more often, the banking giant has been able to shut about a quarter of the floors in its current London headquarters. That should help as HSBC plans to move its head office to a new location next year that's roughly half the size of its tower in Canary Wharf, Chief Executive Officer Georges Elhedery said on a conference call with journalists. The bank is planning to rely on other offices across the city in order to accommodate all its staffers in London, he said.
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Gregg Wallace admits he 'might have hit the bottle' after allegations of inappropriate conduct cost him his MasterChef role and left his TV career in ruins
Gregg Wallace has admitted he might have hit the bottle after being fired over his behaviour on MasterChef. The fallen host admitted that he'd endured a 'difficult' few months and might have sought solace in booze. But he said fitness had saved him. He runs a website called Gregg Wallace Health and is now offering £200-a-month personal training packages. The telly star shared a social media reel of him outside London's Canary Wharf at dawn as he prepared to hit the gym with a pal. He told fans: 'Look, it has been a difficult few months and I made a decision when all this started to really look after myself physically. So I exercise better than I did before. 'I've got better nutrition than I ever did before, and I don't know what I'd have done without that. Possibly hit the bottle. I don't know. 'But here I am in probably the best physical condition I've ever been.' He launched his new career as PT just weeks ago after he lost five stone three years ago. The 60-year-old has announced he is personally training clients to improve their "wellness" for the £200 a month fee. In a video posted to Instagram, he explained: 'You do not have to accept decline as a part of getting older. 'You can do something about this. You can be leaner, fitter, healthier, [and] have more energy.' Gregg continued: 'I went on my own wellness journey and I am healthier at 60 than I was at 30. 'I coach people over 50. I help them feel better and look better and have more confidence.
Telegraph
2 days ago
- Business
- Telegraph
The Cheshire ‘asylum king' worth £400m making a fortune from migrant hotels
For more than a decade, Britannia Hotels earned a dubious distinction. In annual surveys by consumer group Which?, it repeatedly emerged as the UK's worst hotel chain. In 2023, it achieved this honour for the 11th year running, with complaints ranging from cleanliness and room quality to customer service issues. Yet the man behind the business hasn't done too badly. Alex Langsam, who founded the chain nearly 40 years ago and remains its chief executive to this day, was estimated to be worth £401m in this year's Sunday Times Rich List. The 87-year-old's wealth has been bolstered in recent years by the Government's use of his hotels to accommodate asylum seekers via lucrative taxpayer-funded contracts. In fact, his empire of more than 60 sites has become so well-known as a go-to chain for migrant accommodation that Langsam himself has been dubbed the 'asylum king'. The Britannia International Hotel in London's Canary Wharf district is expected to become the latest in the group to host migrants. A ring of steel has been erected around the site, which has been commissioned by the Home Office as contingency accommodation (at a rate of £81 per room, per night) for small boat arrivals – attracting the ire of protesters. For all the attention on the hotel of late, Langsam himself, a self-made tycoon whose business spans the country, appears to remain a highly private and somewhat enigmatic figure. Most of those who live near his sprawling 10-bedroom stone mansion in a village in Greater Manchester seemed unfamiliar with their neighbour when The Telegraph visited last week. 'There are a lot of business people around here and mostly they keep themselves to themselves…. people are very private,' one neighbour commented. The hotelier's property (reported to be worth £3.4m) sits on a vast plot surrounded by high brick walls on one side and a long, high hedge on another. A member of staff at his nearby business headquarters said he was currently out of the country. Indeed, a 2012 court judgment shows that he obtained confirmation from the Inland Revenue in 1999 that he was not domiciled in the UK for tax purposes, 'on the basis that he had maintained his domicile of dependence in Austria due to his father's domicile there'. Langsam is reportedly unmarried, and work is said to dominate his life. But competitors with decades of experience in the hospitality industry say they have never met him, and don't know anyone who has. Indeed, insiders say Langsam's company has a reputation for not engaging with correspondence from outsiders – be they politicians or property developers – keen to liaise with the company or make offers for its assets. He appears to have only ever given one interview to a major newspaper. (The Telegraph's own approach to Britannia Hotels for comment went unanswered, as is reportedly the norm.) Speaking to The Guardian in 2011, Langsam addressed the fact he and his parents were once refugees themselves, with the family having fled to Britain from the Nazis. Hitler's Germany had annexed Austria some three months before Langsam's birth, and the family took the last train out of Vienna, leaving behind their property and business interests. They would 'probably have gone to the gas chambers' had they not been welcomed in the UK, Langsam told The Guardian. The family were reportedly interned on the Isle of Man, in common with many other refugees fleeing the Nazis, but later ended up in Hove on the Sussex coast. Those said to be close to Langsam talk of an 'entirely self-made, incredibly hardworking' individual. 'I suspect the fact that so many of his family were murdered in the Holocaust continues to motivate him to this day,' an unnamed source, speaking on the grounds of strict anonymity, told Unherd last year. 'Yes, he has been criticised for providing accommodation for migrants but this was after all at the specific request of our government. They have to live somewhere.' Perhaps unsurprisingly, others take a somewhat dimmer view. Critics have accused Langsam and his company of 'raking in as much money as they can from whatever source', including by cashing in on the illegal migration crisis – which has seen the cost of housing migrants and asylum seekers soar to £4m a day as Channel crossings continue unabated. As a young man, Langsam studied economics at Aberystwyth University in Wales, joking later that it was the only institution that would allow him to do so after he failed his O-level in maths. He reportedly worked as an estate agent before becoming a property developer and enjoying success with various projects in Manchester. In 1976, he bought the 100-bedroom Country House Hotel in the south of the city and founded Britannia Hotels. Then, in 1982, he opened his second hotel, having bought and developed a council-owned derelict listed building in central Manchester the previous year. These were the first two building blocks in what was to become a nationwide hospitality empire. It was from here that he gradually bought and developed more buildings, including historic ones, adding hotels in Liverpool, Manchester, Warwickshire, Stockport, Birmingham, London, Cheshire, Leeds and elsewhere to his expanding portfolio. In 2011, the Britannia group bought Pontins from administrators for an estimated £20m. At the time, the holiday camp company operated five parks across Britain and, according to Langsam then, represented 'an important part of our shared heritage'. He promised to provide 'considerable investment' and to safeguard the jobs of Pontins' 850 employees, saying his firm was delighted to be able to 'rescue' a 'great British institution'. Langsam added that Britannia had a track record of adopting 'neglected properties' and making 'the necessary investment to restore them to their former glory'. 'Strain on local services' But whether the 'necessary investment' has truly been made seems a matter for debate. In Blackpool, where Britannia's seafront Metropole Hotel has accommodated asylum seekers since 2021, Labour MP Chris Webb would beg to differ. 'I've had concerns about the hotel for a number of years, even before it was an asylum location,' he says. 'It's been an iconic hotel for years but has had a lack of investment, and then it's been turned into an asylum hotel and… just been left to go to ruin.' He claims there have been problems of 'damp, mould, water coming through the carpet', and that it isn't suitable for asylum seekers. 'We've seen 520 people in there at times, predominantly families and young people,' he says. 'There aren't suitable facilities in there for young people… [and] it adds a lot of strain to local services.' He has tried to raise his concerns with the hotel but describes the response as 'disappointing'. He has just been put through to Serco, a private company contracted by the Government to provide migrant accommodation (and which oversees operations at the Metropole), he says. 'It's been difficult to speak to Britannia on this,' Webb adds. Serco has previously denied the hotel had any issues with either sewage or drainage. Neglect and investment concerns He is not the only MP who has found it a challenge to communicate with Britannia. Last year, then-Conservative MPs Dr James Davies, Sally-Ann Hart and Damien Moore called for an inquiry into its practices after Pontins sites in their constituencies were suddenly shut down. They too raised concerns about neglect of the sites and a lack of investment. 'Pontins is located in the ward I represented when I was a county councillor in my home town of Prestatyn, North Wales. It was a frequent cause for concern because they invested no money in it and there were persistent complaints from people who visited it,' says Dr Davies, who previously served as parliamentary under-secretary of state in the Wales Office. 'The company never responded to anything that I sent their way. As an MP I tried again and still had no replies.' The company announced it was shutting the Prestatyn Sands branch of Pontins, as well as the Camber Sands branch in East Sussex, with immediate effect, not long before Christmas 2023. In October last year, it was reported that Britannia was planning to reopen a holiday park on the Prestatyn site as soon as possible. But Dr Davies says it still remains empty and is 'gradually falling into greater disrepair'. He talks of a 'general sense of decline and lack of investment' in the Pontins sites 'but also [in] all [Britannia's] hotels as well – and a feeling they were impacting on the hospitality sector in the country as a whole'. Dr Davies attempted to contact the company about its plans after the closure of Pontins' Prestatyn Sands site but 'was met with silence', he says. He highlights the discrepancy between the company being routinely accused of failing to adequately maintain their estates – and in some cases letting them fall into disrepair – while 'raking in' money from 'asylum accommodation'. 'They were relying on government funds to bankroll their business model,' Dr Davies alleges. The Home Office, meanwhile, stresses it is bringing the situation under control. 'In Autumn 2023, there were more than 400 asylum hotels in use across the UK at a cost of almost £9m per day, and in the months before the election, the asylum backlog soared again as decision-making collapsed, placing the entire asylum system under unprecedented strain,' a spokesman for the department said. They added there has been a 'rapid increase in asylum decision-making and the removal of more than 24,000 people with no right to be in the UK'. 'By restoring order to the system, we will be able to end the use of asylum hotels over time and reduce the overall costs to the taxpayer of asylum accommodation. There are now fewer hotels open than there were before the election,' the spokesman said. 'I am grateful for what this country has given me' Langsam himself would no doubt defend his legacy. In the 2011 Guardian interview, he sang the praises of the country his parents made their home, and pointed towards what he saw to be his own contributions to British life. 'My father was the most nationalistic person I have ever come across,' Langsam said. 'Britain saved his life and gave him a living and he instilled that in me. I am grateful for what this country has given me.' He explained his 'formula' as enabling 'extraordinary buildings' to be 'enjoyed by ordinary people'. Spotting an opportunity appears to be his forte. So, too, perhaps does remaining out of the spotlight. But past legal battles possibly shed a little more light. In a High Court case in 2010, Langsam sought damages for professional negligence against his former solicitors, Beachcroft, who had acted for him in a previous professional negligence claim that he had brought against his former accountants. In the first case, which he brought against his accountants Hacker Young, Langsam claimed they had negligently failed to advise him he was entitled to be treated as having non-domicile status. The case was settled shortly before trial with a £1m payment to Langsam. He then brought the second case against the solicitors who acted for him in the first, arguing he should in fact have recovered £3m, not £1m. He lost this time, both at the High Court and also when he challenged the ruling in the Court of Appeal. 'Mr Langsam is a very wealthy man with what can be described as 'large personality',' said the judgment in the second High Court case. 'He is clearly used to getting his way and dominating those around him.'
Telegraph
3 days ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
‘Racist, far-Right' protesters: a Sikh, a Chinese man and a veteran with mixed-race kids
Of the thousands of bankers in Canary Wharf, only one crossed the footbridge to the newly designated migrant hotel opposite the district's glass towers, curious to witness the commotion. Metal fencing surrounded the entrance of the Britannia Hotel, guarded by a wall of police and a private security guard in a surgical mask. Territorial support vans crawled past. It was hard to escape the feeling that a great crime had been committed. Across the road, a smattering of protesters milled about – some live-streaming the police, who filmed them in return – while others cheered as cars honked in support. The lone banker, smartly dressed in a suit, watched from the edge. His colleagues weren't overly bothered by the disturbance. 'They live in Battersea and Fulham.' The demonstration outside the Britannia was in its second day, having originally been sparked by a false rumour that asylum seekers from the Bell Hotel in Epping had been moved here. The Home Office have nonetheless confirmed the hotel will be used to house another group of asylum seekers, after reports of tourists having room bookings suddenly cancelled without proper explanation were shared online. Few residents welcomed the prospect of people fresh off dinghies arriving in the sanitised core of London's financial district. 'This is the only place in London you'd walk around in a Rolex,' the banker said. 'A lot of Chinese, Japanese and Hong-kongers live here. It's not like Tower Hamlets.' Hotels have been used to house migrants for decades, usually in peripheral Northern towns few in Westminster knew or cared much about. In 2017, it was found that 57 per cent of asylum seekers were housed in the poorest third of Britain; the wealthiest hosted only 10 per cent. That quiet dispersal worked for a while. The benefits of porous borders were privatised – cheap labour for the gig economy, rising rents for landlords – while the costs were offloaded onto the public via tax-funded migrant support, suppressed wages, overstretched services, and housing shortages. The scheme spared ministers the grubby work of signing off on border control, creating conditions that allowed a small class of opportunists to enrich themselves from the crisis. Slum landlords could become Home Office millionaires, while the ageing magnates of hotel empires – among them, Britannia's owner Alex Langsam – were spared from market forces by taxpayer-funded subsidy. Over 170,000 people have now arrived in Britain by crossing the Channel. There are simply no 'suitable' locations left for accommodation. The use of hotels, itself a concession to the need to quickly house the excessive number of arrivals, has seen asylum seekers placed both in leafy market towns like Epping and Diss and London cultural centres like Shoreditch and the Barbican. Even Canary Wharf, a place once intended to advertise modern Britain to the world, is expected to share in the burden. Perhaps the strangeness of the decision to house asylum seekers – here of all places – was reflected in the surprising diversity of those hanging around the demonstration. A brawny Sikh man in a Louis Vuitton-branded turban held a sign reading, 'Stop calling us far-Right. Protect our women and children.' Nearby, a smartly dressed Chinese man waved a similar placard, standing alongside residents from Malaysia and Australia. They mingled among more provocative signs, including a St George's flag emblazoned with, 'The English began to hate', a line from Kipling's wartime ballad The Beginning. A visibly agitated Frenchman implored passing journalists to cover the protest fairly. The Reform chairman for Newham and Tower Hamlets Lee Nallalingham, speaking in a personal capacity, claimed the coalition extended to his own family. 'Look, when my Sri Lankan father, my Ukrainian step-mother and my Japanese wife are all sharing the same views, there's clearly something there,' he said. 'We like to pretend it's some stereotypical demographic issue. If it was, I wouldn't be here.' Concerns about safety and fairness predominated. The deal arranged by the Home Office would house up to 400 asylum seekers in the hotel for £81 per night. At full capacity, the cost is just shy of £12 million per year, in an area where the average one-bed rent is £3,000 and around 20,000 people are stuck on housing wait lists. Perhaps Tower Hamlets Council feels it can afford the expense: it recently advertised a £40,000 post to expedite asylum housing and tackle 'racism and inequality'. 'I don't agree with it,' said Terry Humm, 56, his beret marking him as a former member of the 2nd Battalion Royal Green Jackets. 'There are thousands of ex-servicemen on the streets in England – what about housing people who fought for Queen and Country?' He was quick to head off any charge of prejudice. 'I'm not racist at all, my children are mixed race,' he said. 'I just find it disgusting.' Mr Humm, who joined the army in 1989 and served in Northern Ireland, warned of renewed sectarian tension on this side of the Irish Sea. 'The ingredients are in the mixing bowl – someone's bound to make the cake'. A Met officer who'd served in the Welsh Guards passed by and paid his respects. Humm heard about the demonstration on TikTok. Others mentioned WhatsApp groups that had grown from 100 to over 3,000 members in the space of weeks. There was talk of 'civil war' and Britain being a 'ticking bomb', echoing government fears of unrest spreading across the country. 'There's going to be riots within the next six weeks, mark my words,' said one man, a builder in his 40s from Stepney. 'They've brought them here because they think Canary Wharf is secure. But what they don't realise is Tower Hamlets will not have this. It will escalate into a war,' he said, his voice rising. 'Epping set an example,' he added. 'It showed that as a community if you stand together you can make your voice be heard. The rhetoric of protesters seems to match up with the reality of increasingly inflamed tensions this summer. Earlier this month, migrants in Gravelines lobbed Molotov cocktails at French police, reportedly using fuel siphoned from the very dinghies they intended to board for Britain. A spate of sexual assaults and other violent crimes by illegal migrants stoked public frustration at an asylum system that appears impervious to reasonable adaptation. The protest remained fairly civil until the arrival of counter-demonstrators from Stand Up To Racism, an organisation open about its collaboration with the Socialist Workers Party. Divided by the road, the two groups screamed abuse at each other: 'paedophile protectors!' met with a reply of 'racists!' One female activist reminded me of someone I had met while reporting on the Bibby Stockholm barge, who furnished migrants aboard with toiletries, pens and maps. Earlier this month, one of its occupants was convicted of assaulting a teenage girl on a beach, telling her he'd 'never been this close to a white woman'. As I spoke to another far-Left activist, an egg splattered on the pavement between us, lobbed from the balcony of a luxury apartment building next to the hotel. The first 15 or so floors are reserved for affordable housing. South Asian residents in Islamic attire gathered on balconies to watch the scene. Inside their separate entrance, the only visible signs were an 'Eid haircut price list' and a notice warning residents not to hang clothes, toss cigarettes, or display flags or banners from their windows. Apartments there can cost millions. According to one resident, their Saudi neighbour is 'furious' at the decision to place the migrants next door, and the occupant of the penthouse flat is rumoured to have decided to sell up. Canary Wharf was once lauded as a turning point in Britain's post-war decline – 'a citadel of finance,' as Reuters put it, 'atop once-derelict docks.' It stands as a crowning accomplishment of the Thatcher years. But London is no longer the unquestioned centre of international finance. Canary Wharf appears now to be sliding back to its pre-regeneration state, blighted by empty commercial lots and chintzy stores that never seem to have customers. Residents of luxury residential buildings will live side by side with asylum seekers, just as the rest of the country is expected to. Amidst the pomp of Canary Wharf's creation, Margaret Thatcher warned that 'where there is no vision, the people perish.' She no doubt had the glittering financial district just across the river in mind. Today we need only look at the Britannia Hotel.
Daily Mail
6 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Rings of steel placed around Canary Wharf and Epping asylum seeker hotels after second night of anti-migrant protests outside four-star venue
A ring of steel is being set up around a luxury four-star hotel that's been converted to house migrants, following sweeping protests this week. Large barriers have been installed outside The Britannia International Hotel in London 's Canary Wharf this morning. It comes after a second night of fiery scenes following a major rally by anti-migrant activists outside the swanky city centre venue - where rooms can go for up to £425 a night. Guards kitted out in black uniforms and wearing face masks were seen manning the barriers this morning, as security was tightened. Meanwhile, more than a dozen officers from the Metropolitan Police have gathered outside the building. The heightened protective measures come amid fresh fears of further protests exploding tomorrow and over the weekend. In Epping, Essex, the community is once against braced for fresh demonstrations this week following violent clashes by 'thugs' outside The Bell Hotel, which is also housing illegal asylum seekers. The mayhem erupted earlier this month after one of the hotel's Ethiopian residents was charged with sexually assaulting schoolgirls in the leafy Essex town. This afternoon, metal fencing was delivered to the hotel on the back of a flatbed truck, in a seeming drive to beef up the building's defences. Since the disorder earlier this month, protests have spread to other parts of the country, with more than 150 gathering outside The Park Hotel, in Diss, Norfolk on Monday after the Home Office announced plans to change it from housing asylum-seeker families to single men. The boss of the organisation representing rank-and-file police officers has chillingly warned the disorder in Epping's was the 'signal flare' which could spark an outbreak of violent protests. Police could now be dragged away from neighbourhood duties to keep the peace at rallies outside migrant hotels, said Tiff Lynch, head of the Police Federation. Ms Lynch said officers were being 'pulled in every direction' and commanders were 'forced to choose between keeping the peace at home or plugging national gaps'. She said if violent protests spread throughout the summer, it would be 'dangerous to assume' that police forces would be able to 'hold the line indefinitely' 'It would be comical if it weren't so serious - and so familiar. Local commanders are once again being forced to choose between keeping the peace at home or plugging national gaps,' she wrote in the Telegraph. She said Epping was 'not just a troubling one-off', adding: 'It was a signal flare. A reminder of how little it takes for tensions to erupt and how ill-prepared we remain to deal with it.' The hotel in Canary Wharf was the latest to be converted into asylum accommodation by the Home Office, as Britain braces itself for a potential surge in illegal migrants crossing the Channel in the summer. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has been warned the nation could face a second 'summer of riots' if Labour fails to get a grip on such hotels being used amid rising public anger. The decision for the four-star city building to house asylum seekers has already been branded an 'insult', with some residents and local business owners saying they fear for their safety. Anti-migrant activists claim the new wall outside the lavish glass-fronted building has been built to keep them away from the hotel entrance after yesterday's rally, which saw them clashing with police. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Phiip went on the attack last night and blasted the government for spending taxpayers' cash on housing migrants in Canary Wharf. 'It is outrageous that the Government is splurging taxpayers' hard-earned money on luxury hotels for illegal immigrants when most people in this country would struggle to afford a hotel in central London,' he told The Sun. 'This is one of the most luxurious hotels people can only dream of staying in, right in the heart of London's financial centre.' He continued: 'No wonder illegal immigrants are flooding across the Channel in record numbers,' adding: 'This is an insult to law-abiding citizens.' Workers spent yesterday hauling beds and mattresses into a four-star hotel in Canary Wharf after a night of protests in response to Government plans to house migrants there. Labourers dragging new furniture into the hotel were allowed through the metal fencing and police cordon in preparation for the arrival of 'hundreds' of asylum seekers. Today, workers inside the hotel appeared to be installing privacy tape on the main entrance doors at the site, which obscured views into the building. Protesters had gathered outside the hotel amid reports asylum seekers were being transferred from Epping, where trouble had previously broken out, to the capital, although the Home Office later clarified this was not the case. Tower Hamlets Council did, however, confirm the Government intends to use the hotel - which has around 500 rooms - for asylum seekers in a move which has angered anti-migrant protesters and guests whose bookings have been cancelled. Privacy tape has seemingly been installed at the hotel today on its main entrance doors The Met Police said it has officers at the scene and warned it wouldn't hesitate to clampdown on criminal thugs trying to create mayhem outside the hotel. A spokesman told MailOnline: 'We continue to have officers deployed in the vicinity of the Britannia International Hotel where protests have taken place over recent days. 'They are there to provide reassurance to local residents and businesses, to ensure that any further protest takes place peacefully and to respond to any incidents. 'We continue to encourage those exercising their lawful right to protest to do so responsibly and with consideration to the impact on those trying to go about their lives in the local area. 'Anyone who crosses the line from lawful protest into criminality can expect to face police action.' In Epping, Essex Police has issued a dispersal order, which is in place from 2pm on Thursday until 8am on Friday, covering an area including the town centre, transport hubs and networks such as the underground station. The order gives officers the power to tell anyone suspected of committing or planning antisocial behaviour to leave the area or face arrest. It comes as the force faces criticism over its handling of the display, which led to riot police being drafted in, as activists hurled bricks and other missiles at police vans. The Chief Constable for Essex Police has dismissed calls to resign over the force's handling of the Epping protests after footage emerged of officers escorting pro-migrant activists to an asylum seeker hotel where violent clashes erupted. Ben-Julian Harrington rejected calls from Reform UK leader Nigel Farage to step down and firmly extinguished claims his officers had given a higher level of protection to pro-migrant protesters. Asked if he would resign, he told a press conference on Wednesday: 'No, I am not [resigning]. I am not going to do that. This is not about me, this is about the communities of Essex.' He added: 'The issue is not about my resignation. The issue is about an effective police operation that keeps the communities of Epping safe...' The Bell Hotel, in Epping, Essex, has been the centre of a string of violent demonstrations after an asylum seeker was arrested and charged with sexually assaulting a teenage girl in the town eight days after arriving in the UK. Essex Police had initially denied it had brought Stand Up to Racism activists to the hotel before ugly clashes broke out with anti-migrant protesters on Thursday. But after being shown footage of officers leading the group from a nearby station to outside the hotel, the force then backtracked and admitted it had provided a 'foot cordon'. Mr Farage called for Chief Constable Harrington to resign, saying the footage is 'absolutely disgraceful' and 'heads must roll'. The Reform UK leader later posted footage allegedly showing pro-migrant protesters being 'bussed' to the demonstration in police vans but Essex Police said this was 'categorically' untrue. The force explained that pro-migrant protesters were given a 'foot cordon' on their way to the protest and those who were 'clearly at risk of being hurt' later on were 'escorted by vehicle'. Facing a barrage of questions, Chief Constable Harrington rejected claims his officers had given a higher level of protection to pro-migrant protesters. 'No, I don't accept that,' he said. 'The only protection that officers are doing is to those lawful and law-abiding people, whether they are in that accommodation, whether they are the people of Epping or whether they are people who are standing there with placards and banners wishing to make a very important and legitimate view, whichever your views about it. 'Where officers have intervened that is because there has been are not being partial in any way, shape or form.' The chief constable also dismissed claims pro-migrants were 'bussed' to the hotel', explaining: 'There has been some accusations in the media that we drove people to the protest. That is not true. 'We have not driven anybody to that protest. People made their own way there... we did take people away for their safety and the safety of everyone there.' Five people have so far been charged with violent disorder following the protests in Epping. Stuart Williams, 36, of Thornwood, Epping, has been charged and remanded in custody alongside Dean Smith, 51, also of Epping. Jonathan Glover, 47, of Waltham Abbey, and Keith Silk, 33, of Loughton, have also been charged with violent disorder. They were given conditional bail. All four are due to appear at Chelmsford Magistrates' Court on August 18. Joe McKenna, 34, of Wickford, is charged with failing to remove a face covering when directed to do so. He remains on bail ahead of a hearing at Chelmsford Magistrates' Court on September 24. The demonstrations followed a man living in the hotel being charged with sexual assault, harassment and inciting a girl to engage in sexual activity.
