Protests as UK ministers say they’ll house 1,200 asylum seekers in seaside town
Furious residents living next to a disused prison earmarked to house up to 1,200 asylum seekers – mostly young men – on Sunday told how they are terrified for the safety of the elderly and children. Incensed locals living beside the dilapidated Northeye complex just off the East Sussex coast on Sunday night called on the Home Office to rethink what they said was a “horrifying” decision.
Ministers have chosen the derelict jail outside the seaside town of Bexhill-on-Sea to take migrants currently in hotels.
Residents said they feel badly let down by the Home Office and their Tory MP, Huw Merriman.
They claimed the elderly and families with young children were particularly alarmed at the prospect of so many young men being kept there with nothing to do. Many also warned that the site was “riddled with asbestos”.
Northeye is next to scores of residential homes but has no shops or pubs, other than a petrol station on the main road.
Residents have been holding a number of protests in recent weeks, with 500 gathering outside the site after they first learned of the plans late last month.
Resident Pauline Wicking, 77, said “It doesn’t take much imagination to see how hundreds of men congregating in groups, will dominate our town, which has many retired people.”
Mike Reynolds, 77, said: “An invasion of 1,200 young males represents one in six of the total existing young men in Bexhill.”
Resident Graham Casselden said: “It is shameful that we learned about this with nobody even thinking that maybe the residents might like to know about it before it became public.” The home of Sarah Dyer, 50, is next to Northeye.
She said: “We are absolutely horrified. They’ve told us nothing at all.”
MP Mr Merriman said he pledged to work closely with the government to reassure residents.
But Tamsin Baxter of the Refugee Council charity said: “There would be no need to use former prisons if cases were dealt with in a timely manner.”
