The Home Office has admitted that an unaccompanied nine-year-old child was placed in an asylum seeker hotel because of shortages of local authority care placements.
The disclosure came during an urgent injunction application in the high court from Brighton and Hove city council, which is trying to prevent the Home Office from resuming placements in a hotel from which a large number of children previously disappeared. Some of them are suspected to have ended up with traffickers or people who are exploiting them.
The council has said it believes that because the location of the hotel has previously been disclosed in the media, and because of known “county lines” drug activity in the area, any children placed in the hotel by the Home Office in future could be vulnerable to exploitation. The hotel’s location was described as “notorious”.
The judge, Mr Justice Johnson, rejected the injunction application, allowing the Home Office to place children in the hotel again. The department said it used hotels to accommodate some unaccompanied children seeking asylum for a short time because of delays in placing them in the care of local authorities, which are often overstretched.
After a public outcry about lone children disappearing from such hotels, revealed by the Observer, the Home Office emptied its hotels designated for child asylum seekers only. At the time neither local authorities nor the Home Office had legal responsibility for this group. The family court subsequently ruled that local authorities had responsibility for lone children in hotels.
Stephanie Harrison KC, acting for the council, told the court it would not be in the best interests of children to place them in the Brighton hotel, and raised concerns about the prospects of the children staying there. “The critical issue underlying this is the safeguarding of children,” she said, adding that the council did not believe the hotel would be safe for the children.
“Brighton can’t meet its obligations to undertake assessments [under the Children Act] for every child that comes through its doors. Children who are under 16 who are not in accommodation that is regulated – it is not only unlawful, it is a criminal offence. That encompasses the gravity of the situation.”
The court heard that of the 144 children who had gone missing from hotels, 139 had been in Brighton.
Lisa Giovannetti KC, for the Home Office, said local authorities were under huge pressure. She said the average length of stay in a hotel for an unaccompanied child asylum seeker was 9.8 days before they were transferred into local authority care.
She confirmed the lone nine-year-old had been placed in a hotel but said the child had been there for less than 24 hours. She said “quite a high proportion” of children in hotels were under 16 – 53 out of 192 children as of 29 June.
The judge heard that Kent county council and a children’s rights organisation were planning similar legal action relating to the accommodation of unaccompanied migrant children in hotels. Johnson said a full hearing of Brighton and Hove city council’s case would be held as soon as possible.
