Hotel asylum seekers ‘will be the county’s last’ claims council chief exec

Herefordshire Council has confirmed it does not expect the county to host more asylum seekers after two hotels in the county cease being used for this.

Its chief executive Paul Walker said last month that the Talbot Hotel in Leominster would no longer host those awaiting decisions on asylum claims after the end of February, followed by the Three Counties Hotel in Hereford at the end of March.

Now the council’s asylum seekers team has said that those still resident at these “contingency hotels” when they close will be moved to other accommodation operated by the Home Office’s contractor Serco.

“We are not aware of any further temporary accommodation for asylum seekers in the county being procured in Herefordshire,” the council’s team added.

It explained that the Home Office “has always said it regards hotel accommodation as unsuitable, so it continues to look for dispersal accommodation in the private rented sector”.

But with the ongoing shortage of such accommodation in Herefordshire, the company had not been able to acquire any in the county, it said.

Meanwhile a recent freedom of information request has confirmed that the council is currently responsible for 47 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.

But just five of these are currently resident in the county, the asylum seekers team said.

The Government claimed at the start of the year to have largely cleared its  backlog of “legacy” asylum cases dating from before June 2022.

But this appears to have largely been cancelled out by new asylum claimants since then whose cases are still to be decided on, thought to now number over 94,000.