York: Nurses' hotel accommodation to be used by asylum seekers

York Hospital said it was struggling to find alternative accommodation for nurses

Nurses living in two hotels are being forced to move out to make way for asylum seekers, a hospital has claimed.

York Hospital hires rooms at two city centre hotels for overseas nurses and said it would struggle to find alternative accommodation.

The Home Office, however, said it had not given notice to nurses to leave.

A spokesperson added it could not comment on "operational arrangements" for individual sites used for asylum accommodation.

York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals Trust pays for accommodation for overseas nurses while they take the exams necessary to allow them to work in the UK.

There are currently 82 foreign nurses in one York hotel, with 17 more set to arrive in December, a hospital board meeting was told.

However, hospital bosses claimed the Home Office had now booked-out the hotels to house asylum seekers.

'Very vulnerable'

Polly McMeekin, director of workforce at the hospital, said the trust had initially been given four weeks to vacate two hotels because the Home Office wanted to use them for "the next couple of years".

She told a hospital board of directors meeting that the trust had objected to the plans and it was then given until December to vacate the rooms.

"York has a dearth of accommodation," added Ms McMeekin. "[This] leaves us with no other accommodation - we've explored the military, we've explored universities."

The move would leave the hospital in a "very vulnerable" position, she said.

"This is a vulnerability in our international recruitment pipeline, which is obviously a significant element of the trust priority plan."

The recruitment of nurses from abroad is a key part of the hospital's workforce plans, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

There were around 130 nursing vacancies across the trust in September. Hospital leaders said they hope this will be reduced to about 50 by December.

A Home Office spokesperson said: "The claim that we have given notice to nurses to leave their accommodation is untrue.

"We are working with the local authority to source appropriate accommodation for asylum seekers and to mitigate the impact on the community, like the NHS trust.

"The use of hotels to house asylum seekers is unacceptable - there are currently more than 37,000 asylum seekers in hotels costing the UK taxpayer £5.6m a day."

Asylum seeker ruling

Two English councils have failed in an attempt to block asylum seekers from being relocated to large hotels in their areas.

The High Court ruled on Friday that neither council had shown there was an urgent legal case to prevent the Home Office's contractors from using hotel accommodation.

Ipswich Borough Council and the East Riding of Yorkshire Council had said that the hotels were being turned into hostels, in breach of their local planning controls.

They asked the High Court to impose injunctions ahead of a full trial later this year.

But, in a ruling, Mr Justice Holgate said that the councils had failed to show the court evidence of potential harm that was so serious it required judges to intervene.

The judge also noted there was a statutory duty on the Home Office to provide accommodation for destitute asylum seekers who would otherwise be homeless.