The Home Office has backed down on plans for asylum seekers to sleep four to a small room in a central London hotel after protests by 40 refugees last week.
The rooms in the hotel in Pimlico, Westminster are small and asylum seekers had previously been sharing two to a room. The Home Office said it wanted to increase the number of asylum seekers sharing one room to save money.
Several asylum seekers told the Guardian there was not enough space to fit four people into one small room, that they had to store their clothes on the little floor space available, and that the claustrophobic conditions were stressful.
According to a letter posted on Twitter on 8 June to Adam Hug, the leader of Westminster council, the immigration minister, Robert Jenrick, said the decision to double the number of asylum seekers in one room was part of a plan to reduce the number of hotels used to accommodate asylum seekers by 90 and would save £250m a year.
Hug and Jenrick have traded accusations on the social media platform about the whose fault the protest was.
Hug said the Home Office had not informed the council in advance of the arrival of more than 40 additional asylum seekers to this hotel in the course of meetings. He accused the Home Office of “having mismanaged that process” and leaving people “standing on the street outside the hotel for the entire night”.
Hug understands that the group were sharing two to a room in their previous hotel, but when they arrived in Pimlico they were asked to share with three others. This prompted the protest, which was resolved when the Home Office reverted to rooms of two.
Jenrick said there were “numerous incorrect and misleading statements” made by Hug in a previous letter he wrote to the Home Office about the asylum seekers’ Pimlico pavement protest.
“First, you stated that 40 asylum seekers were placed on the streets of Westminster. That is not true. All the individuals involved claimed to be destitute and as a result a generous offer of accommodation was made to each of them by the Home Office, using taxpayer funds, to accommodate them in the hotel concerned. Some individuals initially turned down this offer and instead chose to stand outside the hotel in protest of their own volition.”
Jenrick added: “It is fair and reasonable to require people to share a room.”
In his previous letter to the Home Office, Hug said: “When dealing with a group of people, many of whom are likely to have been through significant and traumatic events that have led them to seek asylum, asking them to share an inappropriately sized room with multiple strangers defies common sense and basic decency.”
He added that the government demand that four people share one room created “safeguarding and health risks”, and that “leaving them on the street for multiple nights is not an alternative”.
The Home Office has been approached for comment.
