In 2019 the Home Office awarded six regional contracts across the UK for a ten-year period to provide accommodation, support and transport services for asylum seekers pending decisions on their applications for leave to remain. Clearsprings Ready Homes Ltd was the only group to bid in the south of England, thus obtaining what seems to be a monopoly contract running until September 2029 to provide these services within this region.

It not only runs the Napier Barracks in Folkestone but spot-books hotels – including those identified in Hastings – to house the huge increase in numbers.

Just how profitable its operations are was revealed last October when its accounts filed with Companies House showed an astonishing level of profit for the year ending January 2022. On a turnover of £502m –up from £163m the previous year – the company made before tax profits of almost £35m, compared to £4.4m in 2020-21.

The beneficiary of at least 75% of these profits appears to be a single shareholder, a Mr Graham King of Rayleigh, Essex, via a holding company, Clearsprings (Management) Limited.

The directors state in the accounts: “Demand for accommodation for asylum seekers has remained high throughout the year. This has been driven by an ever-increasing influx of asylum applicants to the UK due to high levels of political and economic turmoil in many countries. Contingency accommodation including hotels has increased over the year…The number of arrivals per year is expected to continue at a high level for the foreseeable future.”

The company website makes more qualitative declarations: “We don’t just provide accommodation, we also deliver transportation services, repairs and maintenance and safeguarding support for residents. We also work closely with non-government organisations, local voluntary groups, statutory services, local authorities and landlords to ensure the properties are fully compliant and the welfare of the residents is closely managed… The welfare and safeguarding of our residents is at the heart of our business, and is the key focus when delivering our services.”

The company was invited by HIP last week to describe what communications it has had either with local authorities (Hastings Borough Council and/or East Sussex County Council) or with local voluntary groups over the recent spot-booking of two hotels in Hastings; also how the welfare of the incoming residents is “managed” and what safeguards it undertakes for any minor-age children. It has not responded.

BY HUGH SULLIVAN

On 24 January the UK Parliament debated allegations published in the national Observer newspaper the previous weekend that dozens of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children were being regularly targeted and “kidnapped” by criminal gangs from a Brighton hotel where they had been placed by the Home Office. Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick told MPs: “We take our safeguarding responsibilities extremely seriously and we have procedures in place to ensure all children are accommodated as safely as possible while in those hotels.” There was, he claimed, “24/7 supervision, with support from teams of social workers and nurses. Staff, including contractors, receive briefings and guidance on how to safeguard minors… The movements of under-18s in and out of hotels are monitored and recorded, and they are accompanied by social workers when attending organised activities.”

Whatever the reality of this depiction, Mr Jenrick did not address the fact that other dispersal hotels which are supposed to house adults only are also accommodating a substantial proportion of minor-age children for whom no such safeguarding systems are in place. A spokesperson from East Sussex County Council (ESCC) confirmed last week that they “do not oversee the welfare of people in the adult hotels”, but that their Children’s Social Services department has taken into care “some” unaccompanied asylum seeking under-18s who were originally assessed by Border Force as adults.

“There are different ways in which we can become aware of children in adult accommodation”, the council spokesperson said. “The children themselves can ask for an assessment to be done, through the management of the hotel, or voluntary sector organisations can help them make that application.”

Enter the Buddy Project

One such organisation is Hastings volunteer group the Refugee Buddy Project (RBP), who are rather more forthcoming on the scale of the problem. Alex Kempton, Director of its Operations and Campaigns, says that, out of 82 men accommodated since November in local hotels spot-booked by private company Clearsprings Ready Homes Limited on behalf of the Home Office, nine identified themselves to RBP staff during a registration process as under 18. These were flagged to ESCC, who conducted age assessments and, when satisfied that they were children, removed them and placed them in care.

The spot-booking and mass displacement, to Hastings and other south coast towns, followed clearance and closure of the Manston detention centre near Ramsgate. Hastings Borough Council (HBC) leader Paul Barnett complained to the Home Office in the immediate aftermath that no advance notice had been given to the council by either Clearsprings or themselves, and HBC issued a statement indicating that they were “pressing the Government and their agents to clarify how they intend to support [the asylum seekers] locally and how long they expect them to reside here…We are keen to understand what longer term dispersal plan they intend to put in place.”

Asked last week what responses they were getting, a HBC spokesperson said they were having “a presence at meetings” addressing current accommodation figures, health concerns and general wellbeing issues. “The responsibility lies with the Home Office and [Clearsprings] for the safety and security of residents. The long-term plan of the Home Office is to reduce numbers at the hotel and take those accommodated into core Initial Accommodation or into dispersal accommodation. This however, is a matter to be addressed to the Home Office.”

Government stance

Mr Jenrick told MPs on 24 January: “I want to end the practice of putting children in hotels, but the key to that is stopping people crossing the channel in the first place. If we continue to have tens of thousands of people, including very significant numbers of minors, crossing the channel every year, I am afraid that there is no choice but to accommodate people for a short period of time in hotels before they can flow into better accommodation within local authorities.”

Ms Kempton is scathing. “It used to take up to six months for the Home Office to make a first decision on asylum claims. Now it routinely takes two years. In the meantime all asylum seekers are routinely housed in substandard accommodation and forced to rely on charities like ours to ensure they and their children can get to school and do their homework at home, as well as eat and live with some modicum of dignity.

“Allowing the situation to get this bad is a political decision, serving the government’s narrative that we are ‘being overwhelmed’.

“In the absence of statutory services, we have led the response here, actively engaging with the men, going into the hotel and assessing their needs, helping with financial support, and distributing donations of clothing and hygiene items gathered by the Hastings Community of Sanctuary. But the risk to unaccompanied children is immense. For the Home Office to throw the responsibility back to the local authority as if these children are some football which can be passed from one service to another with no one taking full responsibility is frankly disgusting.”