Migrant resort linked by police to surprising variety of crimes together with sexual offences | UK | News | EUROtoday

A resort housing migrants has been linked to greater than 200 crimes by police throughout the previous 5 years. The Britannia Hotel in Seacroft, Leeds, is believed to be dwelling to round 210 asylum seekers and was one of many first to be taken over by the Home Office.

Residents residing close to the resort made a Freedom of Information request to West Yorkshire Police as to what number of crimes had been dedicated there from January 2021 till final December. It revealed that 202 offences had been dedicated on the positioning – together with intercourse assaults, arson, drug offences and violence. During this era, there have been 11 sexual offences reported, and 25 of arson and legal harm.

There had been 79 offences of violence towards the particular person, 44 public order offences and 12 theft offences.

There had been additionally small numbers of reported burglaries, drug offences, possession of weapons, automobile offences, and theft.

Marti Blagborough, who based the Stand Up Leeds (SUL) group that made the FOI request, mentioned: “People in Seacroft are deeply concerned after official data from West Yorkshire Police showed dozens of recorded crimes at the Britannia Hotel.

“These include violence, sexual offences, public disorder, theft, and criminal damage — all recorded at one location in our community. This isn’t about scaremongering. It’s about safety.”

He added: “We all deserve to feel safe where we live. Our community deserves transparency and protection.

“This hotel should have shut down after the first year when there were six sexual assaults. How many crimes have gone unreported? We want the hotel closed and all illegals deported.”

The SUL group launched a press release to the Sunday Express saying it believes the convictions revealed within the FOI request don’t present the “true scale of offending”.

It added: “All involved care deeply about our community and want only to see it safe for our families to grow up in.

“We will continue to protest outside the hotel until a time comes that there are no undocumented migrants posing a risk to our community.”

The police figures don’t embody an alleged intercourse assault on two teenage women in the back of a grocery store in Seacroft on December 30 final 12 months.

A Home Office spokesman mentioned: “New rules announced this week mean asylum seekers who break the law will now be kicked out of accommodation and stripped of support payments.”

He added {that a} Public Safety Operational Response Team had performed a evaluate of the positioning iast October.

It concluded that criminality and dysfunction related to the positioning was largely pushed by the actions of non-residents fairly than the behaviour of these accommodated on-site.

Asylum seekers have disproportionately been the victims of crimes recorded on the Britannia Hotel, the crew added.