An anonymous report from a clinician working inside one of Britain’s asylum hotels.
I am the clinical lead in an asylum hotel in a medium-sized city in the north of England. We are right in the centre of town. Though we try to keep a low profile, that isn’t always easy with 24-hour hi-vis-wearing security guards patrolling the entrance. It’s a modern building, but it was never designed to provide a continuous living space for 450 people. It is starting to degrade rapidly. My job is to provide a GP service inside the hotel.
I must be inexact about some of the details, but let me tell you: the Home Office is not focused on the details in any significant way. At the hotel I work in, the physical structure is owned by a group of investors; the security firm is the lowest bidder for this type of work; the housing management services are provided by one of the three large local building companies. You have to comb their websites for any information about their activities in the area. The asylum-industrial complex is largely run by for-profit contractors, each leveraging their slice of the cake for further enrichment.
I don’t see an energised response to our recent change of government. There seems to be no plan. While I see a significantly expedited approach to resolving asylum claims in real time, these people are then ejected from the system into the care of local authorities. That burden on local services does not show up in national statistics, but it certainly does on school places and provisions for homeless people in any medium-sized British city. My local authority contacts see no new money or initiatives to cope with the increased demand, and our only multiple-occupancy homeless shelter is entirely full with asylum seekers granted the right to remain. Among our share of residents, it’s an uncomfortable fact that a large number of people will never work a day in their lives, but I am optimistic that, in time, their children will.
This space I work in is extremely secretive. Some of it comes from the housing companies making phenomenal profits from commodifying people. This business is algorithm-led and fixated by process. Some of these providers run prisons, probation and custody suites; there is a hardness to their culture. It can be unkind and arbitrary. No pets allowed, not even a goldfish. No rugs or additional furnishings, no electric scooters, no bicycles in the rooms. It’s hard to make these spaces a home. I see hostility among fellow countrymen, with different factions watching each other carefully. It is opaque and impenetrable where the tensions might lie. It is not a dangerous place to be in, but it has rules. It is very much like a prison in that nobody has anything, so the only thing you have of value is your word. I learned to never promise anything I can’t deliver.
People are not always who they say they are. Most arrivals are undocumented and have disposed of their documents along the way. The Home Office gives them a name and date of birth that is whatever they declare. People do this to reinvent themselves. They may have tried and failed previously under their original name, or they may be wanted overseas. There is no way to check it. They get a legend that is now who they are in the UK. Some people may already have received the right to remain in other European countries and then leave to try their luck in the UK where they might have stronger family groupings. I have met families who have been on the road for years.
I once met an Eritrean man who left his home country and travelled overland via the north Africa route. He was detained by one of the many Libyan militias, tortured and enslaved to work in a brick factory for two years. He managed to escape and make it to Italy on a small boat. Another 18-year-old girl left Iran with her father when she was two years old and has lived in Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands for virtually all of her life. She said they ran down their asylum claims in each of these countries and it took years to get here. Still, with all of that uncertainty, now they have arrived.
We frequently see Home Office ‘investigators’ visiting the hotel to talk to individuals. They seem to be older ex-coppers who are tight-lipped about what they are looking for. I suspect it’s boat drivers, gangmasters and traffickers. But not everybody comes by small boat. We see people who are failed overseas students, mostly from south Asia or Africa, who might have procured a university place. Fortunes might have changed back home and the fees weren’t paid by their family, or they didn’t achieve the required language or educational proficiency by the end of the first year. Sometimes they fall in love with someone from the wrong caste. Running out of options, they enter the asylum system rather than face violence at home. Some families might have work visas that have expired as a family member became ill and they had to care for them. I have seen many nurses from Africa fall into this situation.
We see Ukrainians who might have found themselves on the wrong side in the Donbas and can’t access the government’s Homes for Ukraine scheme. One lady swore she was Ukrainian while the other Ukrainians swore she was Russian. They said her clothes were too garish to be Ukrainian. She said she lost all her documents fleeing. She made us cakes all the time. We used to see a lot of Russian war refuseniks. These were mostly young couples: the husband didn’t want to be fed to the meat grinder in Bakhmut. The Ukrainian men were often here for the same reason. I have fond memories of the Russian journalist who was an expatriate writing anti-Putin articles from a third country. When her husband beat her up, she had to flee that country as her residency depended on him. I meet Yemenis and Sudanese who have worked in the Gulf states for decades who can’t go home to renew their passports, as there is no functioning government. They feel their only option is to fly to the UK to claim asylum.
I’ve seen some crazy things. People boiling chickens in the kettle, fights over the sofas in the lobby, guys trying really hard to fold and conceal Deliveroo bags on the way in. I’ve had falsified medical documentation with a strange plan for me to validate it to help with an asylum claim. I’ve seen residents buy bicycles on Facebook Marketplace and have them stolen the same day. I’ve seen residents driving motorcycles and cars which are then hidden around the corner until they’re towed away for being untaxed and uninsured. I tried explaining insurance to one resident and he just didn’t get it. I’ve seen a mother and son duo who were prolific shoplifters, always being returned by the police. Then he worked in a Co-op for his school-approved work experience.
If a resident brings me a delicious meal that is unsolicited, I know a request for some kind of favour is likely to follow. Sometimes it’s to make me bend the rules, for access to fertility treatment ora futile letter to the Home Office to consider the claim more favourably because of everyday medical conditions. I sympathise, but this is work for an asylum solicitor and they are overestimating my actual clout. They might receive an expedited interview and a favourable decision if they have a terminal illness and a short time to live, but that’s as far as it goes.
People flee death threats and torture abroad. Many of my residents arrive deeply traumatised by the lethal small-boat crossing right at the end. I have seen petrol burns from the boat trip and trench foot and scabies from the Calais Jungle. I have seen landmine injuries and bullet wounds from years ago. I have seen men with 100 cigarette burns on their body; women who were forcibly separated from their husbands crossing Libya and can now barely speak of it. I have heard first-hand the brutality of Pakistani politics and what happens if you back Imran Khan’s party and organise for them. I hear of the secretive Christian churches in Iran where the authorities seize a congregation list and suddenly 50 people have to flee the country.
While London still has the highest number of asylum seekers in total, the government’s policy is to impose mandatory dispersal to all parts of the UK to share the burden. There is no access to public funds from councils, nor is there access to public housing. Residents are offered dispersal accommodation: houses and flats owned by private landlords and subcontracted to the housing company and paid for by the Home Office. They are supposed to only stay for three-to-six months in hotels, but it is often much longer. Our residents learn early on that a refusal to travel carries no penalty. The Home Office makes you sign a waiver saying that you have declared yourself destitute and will accept any transfer anywhere in the UK that is mandatory. Actually, it’s the same tool used to transfer prisoners around the UK prison estate. Our residents know that a refusal generates a warning letter, then has no consequence. I have people under my care who have refused a dozen times. They have skin in the game, their kids are in school, healthcare is immediately available and they like the city.
The real kicker for anyone in the asylum system is what happens at the end. Our government might grudgingly accept your asylum claim. Because everything they do, they do grudgingly: every letter and every email reminds you of the inconvenience you have caused. You don’t get a letter congratulating you. You get a letter saying you have 28 days to vacate the accommodation. If you don’t, that means they will come and remove you.
You will no longer receive the £49.18 a week you were getting if you are self-catering, or £8.86 if you are provided three meals a day by yet another for-profit contractor. Regardless of whether you are in a hotel or a dispersal property, you will still be evicted. You have five years’ leave to remain. You are now homeless. You need to go to a Jobcentre and sign on, and you need to declare yourself (and your family) homeless at the council offices. You are no longer in the asylum system. You are an ordinary British citizen, except this time, our government doesn’t have the same duty of care to you. You can still enjoy universal free healthcare, but this time it’s now six weeks for an appointment instead of the one or two days you got used to.
I have seen whole families banging on the hotel door to see the doctor days after departure. But we can’t see you, you are no longer our patients, security won’t let you in – now, you are civilians. You are not asylum seekers anymore; you are ordinary British citizens. I think you finally realise: after the right to remain comes the hard part, the one that nobody had really told you about.
