Derby: Asylum seekers in city 'just being shifted around'

Derby City Council confirmed the government contract to house asylum seekers at the hotel would soon end

Asylum seekers set to be moved out of hotels in Derby and Burton-upon-Trent will just be moved on to similar sites, a campaigner has said.

Serco, on behalf of the Home Office, has confirmed contracts to house asylum seekers across 50 UK hotels are ending, including one in Derby.

But Derbyshire Refugee Solidarity's Steve Cooke said the government was "just shifting the problem around".

A Home Office spokesman said that it showed "significant progress".

Mr Cooke said more than 100 women and children were being moved out of the Derby hotel, and were "very distressed and further traumatised", particularly where children will need to move school, which he said was "storing up problems for the NHS".

Asylum claims for those now leaving three hotels around Derby and Burton-upon-Trent have not been dealt with, he said, and some will only be moving down the road - from Burton-upon-Trent to other hotels in Derbyshire.

He added: "The hotels aren't closing because the asylum claims have been dealt with, they're closing because they're moving those asylum seekers to other, half-empty hotels.

"These hotels should never have been opened - it's a sign of the asylum process not working properly for the last three, four or five years.

"Asylum claims should be processed, as they were 20 years ago, within three months... two years now is average."

Mr Cooke said there were more than 1,000 asylum seekers in nine hotels around Derby, some of whom had been stuck there for more than two years.

Rishi Sunak has said controlling migration is an "urgent national priority"

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has pledged to clear the "legacy backlog" of asylum cases - but the government's own figures, published earlier this month, show there are still more than 4,500 cases in that backlog.

The announcement by the government that 50 hotels will close by the end of February was welcomed by South Derbyshire MP Heather Wheeler earlier this week.

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A Derby City Council spokesman confirmed the hotel in the city centre will be closing before the end of next month.

"We have received notification from the Home Office that the contract to house asylum seekers at the hotel will end before the end of February," he said.

"All residents will be relocated to other parts of the Home Office asylum estate with at least five days notice.

"We will continue to work with the Home Office to ensure minimal disruption."

A Home Office spokesman would not comment on the details.

However, he said: "We are making significant progress with moving asylum seekers out of hotels, which cost UK taxpayers £8.2m a day.

"We have already exited the first 50 hotels and we will exit more in the coming months."