Stradey Park: Asylum hotel protests cost police £1m

The protests continued until October 2023, when the plans were scrapped

A police force spent more than £1m dealing with protests outside a hotel which was set to house more than 200 asylum seekers.

The protests outside Stradey Park Hotel in Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, started in early July last year.

Fires broke out near the site and about 40 arrests were made between mid August and early October.

The Home Office scrapped the controversial plans in October.

Following a Freedom of Information request by BBC Wales to Dyfed-Powys Police, the Police and Crime Commissioner in the area said the situation had cost the force money and its good relationship with the local community.

Dafydd Llywelyn said he wrote to the Home Office at the time, calling for the plans to be reversed as "a matter of urgency".

Protesters staged demonstrations against housing asylum seekers at Stradey Park Hotel in Llanelli

The Home Office said it had confirmed a police funding settlement with Dyfed-Powys Police.

The hotel in Llanelli was set to house up to 241 people as part of UK government plans to reduce asylum costs.

Concerns over suitability and lack of information were raised by local people, the local authority and politicians.

After the announcement was made, crowds gathered outside the hotel and a makeshift base for protesters was set up.

Labour councillor Martyn Palfreman said it was "an episode in the history of the area that nobody really anticipated".

"It was a litany, really of tension, of understandable anxiety… a really intense time," he added.

• Home Office 'should help repair damage' in Llanelli

• Safety fears over asylum hotel protests

In October, Dyfed-Powys Police's Supt Ross Evans said the behaviour "of some individuals has gone far beyond what we would expect from a lawful protest".

Mr Llywelyn previously said he would ask for a £300,000 reimbursement for policing costs of the protest.

The new figure of more than £1,165,000 shows that the total cost for the force is three times what was expected.

Mr Llywelyn said he was not shocked by the final figure, adding there were "several operational and organisational pressures that have impacted in the current financial year", including Operation Cambrian, which covered the response to the Stradey Park Hotel protests.

He said he wrote "several letters" to the home secretary at the time of the protests, urging the government to reconsider its use of the hotel as "tensions around the site had been growing on a daily basis for weeks".

"How much did the Home Office themselves spend on the site? I have asked the home secretary to provide a clear explanation for the position we found ourselves in, and the significant pressure which were being placed on local service providers in Carmarthenshire and beyond," he said.

Dame Nia Griffith, Labour MP for Llanelli, said the plans had been "a disaster from start to finish" and "were brought about by incompetence, mismanagement and a damaging lack of respect for local people".

"The fact they spent over a million pounds on policing something completely unwanted and wholly unnecessary is a scandal," she said.

"That money could and should have been spent on frontline policing in the area, making our streets and communities safer, not on propping up a failing, misguided idea dreamt up by out of touch, arrogant ministers."

'Lessons will be learned'

Former racial equality commissioner Aled Edwards said there were lessons to be learned.

"The force has integrity, it did its job," he said.

"Lessons will be learned, they always are in these instances.

"We've got to remember here in Wales we've got a good model with the Afghan scheme, the Ukranian scheme, both of those schemes have worked very well."

A Home Office spokesperson said the government was "making significant progress with moving asylum seekers out of hotels", which cost UK taxpayers £8.2m a day.

"We are committed to ensuring the police have the tools they need to public safe and have confirmed a total police funding settlement of up to £18.4bn in 2024-25 - including up to £148.0m for Dyfed-Powys Police," they said.

"Decisions about how funding and resources are utilised is a matter for individual police and crime commissioners."

Additional reporting by Elen Davies and Peter Gillibrand.