Home Office to end use of Hove hotel for child asylum seekers

The Home Office said it had no alternative to use hotels while children awaited placements with local authorities

The Home Office is ending its contract with a hotel to house unaccompanied child asylum seekers in Hove, the council has said.

Labour leader of Brighton & Hove City Council, Bella Sankey, said the government had told the authority the contract would end on Thursday.

She told BBC Sussex: "Not only was this practice inhumane but also unlawful."

The Home Office said it did not comment on individual sites but it was making every effort to end the use of hotels.

Hundreds of children have gone missing from hotels in East Sussex since 2021 and although many have been found, some have been arrested by police.

In July, the High Court ruled that the "routine" housing of unaccompanied child asylum seekers in hotels was unlawful.

At that point, more than 5,400 unaccompanied child asylum seekers had been housed in hotels since July 2021, of whom 32% were under 16.

'Traumatic experience'

Lauren Starkey from the campaign group Homes Not Hotels said on X, formerly Twitter: "We must now keep up the pressure to ensure every child who went missing from our community is found."

Ms Sankey said the National Transfer Scheme, where local authorities in England and Wales share the responsibility in taking in children, was working.

She said: "It models all the best practice we know about how you best support children that have undergone different types of traumatic experience."

The Home Office said it had no alternative but to "urgently" use the hotels while children awaited placements with local authorities.

It said it had always maintained the best place for unaccompanied children to be accommodated was within a local authority. A spokesperson added: "We are making every effort to end the use of expensive hotels which are costing the taxpayer £8.2m a day."

Follow BBC South East on Facebook, on Twitter, and on Instagram. Send your story ideas to [e-mail].