Brighton Campaign Fights to Keep 17 Asylum Seekers in City as Hotel Closes
Community groups have launched a plan to house asylum seekers facing relocation after the Home Office closes a Brighton hotel used for accommodation.
Campaign raises funds to prevent relocation
A campaign group has launched an emergency fundraiser to keep asylum seekers in Brighton after the Home Office announced plans to close a hotel providing accommodation for 17 people.
One resident, identified as Grace to protect her anonymity, told Brighton Says Yes: "We are asking just one thing: let us stay in Brighton. This is where I have found warmth and safety again. Where I stopped just surviving and started truly living. If you move me away, you take me away from the community that has wrapped its arms around me."
Brighton Says Yes has created the Brighton Community Plan, which aims to find alternative accommodation through volunteer hosts and private rentals. The proposal has backing from more than 30 community groups and has already raised more than £20,000 according to organisers.
Long-term funding proposal
Campaigners are calling for long-term Home Office funding for a scheme similar to Homes for Ukraine, with Brighton and Hove City Council coordinating. They estimate the plan could cost less than £682 per person per month, though these figures have not been independently verified.
The proposal was announced during a demonstration on 17 October, when protesters marched through the city centre carrying a banner reading "We are all migrants" and staged a banner drop at the Royal Pavilion.
Andy Richards, secretary of the local Trades Council, said: "So regardless of what local connections they've built up, the fact their children may be in schools here, they may have built links here, they've being shipped off to who knows where."
Brighton Says Yes argues that relocating the group would disrupt their access to schools and healthcare, and break up relationships formed with the wider community.
Council response
Councillor Bella Sankey, leader of Brighton and Hove City Council, said the council empathises with concerns about disruption and anxiety caused by short-notice relocation, and has raised these points with the Home Office.
However, she noted: "Substandard hotel accommodation is not a humane response to housing people seeking asylum, so we are supportive of the government's efforts to transition away from unsuitable hotel accommodation with limited privacy and no cooking facilities into self-contained accommodation."
The council has previously written to the Home Office requesting that affected residents be allowed to remain in Brighton or elsewhere in Sussex.
Immigration minister Anna Turley said in September that the government was prioritising ending the use of asylum hotels and ensuring asylum seekers were provided with suitable alternative accommodation elsewhere in the asylum estate.
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