A notorious Brighton hotel from where scores of children were kidnapped is to be reopened by the Home Office to house unaccompanied youngsters again, leaked internal memos reveal.
The Home Office was forced to empty a string of hotels for unaccompanied children after the Observer revealed that huge numbers were going missing, with many having been abducted by criminal gangs.
Earlier this month immigration minister Robert Jenrick assured parliament there “are no unaccompanied young people in hotels whatsoever”.
However a message from a senior asylum official at the Brighton hotel – from where at least 136 children have gone missing – reveals the site will reopen as early as Tuesday to begin housing asylum-seeking youngsters who recently arrived in the UK without parents or carers.
The message states: “Good news. We will be operational by the 27th June. We can let you know numbers closer to the time once the youngsters start arriving.”
In total, more than 400 unaccompanied children have gone missing from hotels run by the Home Office. Of those, 154 are still missing according to a recent parliamentary debate, despite police efforts to find them.
Around 50 youngsters are believed to be missing from the Brighton hotel, prompting concern they were taken by organised gangs and coerced into criminality. Some appear to have been trafficked while others have been found by police as far away as Scotland.
Sources yesterday said officers had found 12 children from Brighton who had been arrested for offences including working on cannabis farms. There were signs that some had been trafficked. One child, a victim of assault, had allegedly been forced into slavery.
A source who works for Brighton’s children’s services and who requested anonymity said they were deeply troubled by the Home Office’s intention to reopen the Brighton hotel. They added: “I don’t think it is a coincidence that these hotels were emptied after the scandal of the missing young people broke.
“Now public exposure has died down they’re actually reopening the very same place. It’s outrageous.”
Brighton and Hove City Council signalled its intention to stop the Home Office reopening the hotel. Bella Sankey, Labour leader of the council, told the Observer: “We think it would be unlawful and immoral to bring children back to this hotel.”
Three weeks ago the council warned the Home Office that it would take legal action if it attempted to place children in the hotel again. “We asked for assurances they wouldn’t do it. And if they did, we warned them we were going to litigate.”
That the Home Office is prepared to start placing unaccompanied children back in hotels underlines the pressures on its overcrowded asylum system and the lack of spare capacity for housing new arrivals.
In the week to Thursday, another 1,634 asylum seekers arrived by small boat across the Channel – including a number of unaccompanied children.
The contentious development also comes after a family court ruled that unaccompanied children arriving in the UK should be considered “children in need” and cared for by local authorities, not the Home Office.
The Home Office’s choice of the Brighton hotel – where staff have previously been accused of racism and threatening violence to the children – has also come under scrutiny due to the property’s link to one of the UK’s most notorious slum landlords.
According to the Land Registry, the freehold of the hotel is owned by a company that involves family members of the infamous Nicholas van Hoogstraten.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “Due to the rise in dangerous small boats crossings, the government has had no alternative but to urgently use hotels to give unaccompanied asylum-seeking children arriving in the UK a roof over their heads.
“The wellbeing of children and minors in our care is an absolute priority and there is 24/7 security at every hotel used to accommodate them.”
