The Essex town of Epping which saw major protests after a local girl was sexually assaulted by a newly-arrived boat illegal won’t have a permanent migrant plantation forced on it, as the government backs down from buying up local properties for its guests.
Protesters gained a minor victory against the British government, forcing the Home Office and Shabana Mahmood to abandon plans to end the ongoing scandal of housing vast numbers of boat migrant arrivals in publicly-funded hotels by instead buying up local homes and apartments for them to live in instead. Having called the plan “tone-deaf”, the local community leader said residents can “breathe a sigh of relief”, although the plan remains in place to buy property across the rest of the country.
Epping in the County of Essex had been the site of major and ongoing protests over the course of this year after a notorious migrant sex pest housed at the government-contracted Bell Hotel sexually assaulted a child in the town. Despite Epping becoming the national flashpoint on the matter, and inspiring similar protests elsewhere across the summer, the government’s housing contractor Clearsprings still intended to buy up property in what has been described as a “luxurious” part of the town for migrant arrivals.
While the government may believe it will solve the politically poisonous migrant hotels issue by simply buying up homes for alternate accommodation, it is already clear this merely creates new community grievances which can also lead to protests. As reported at the time of the Ballymena protests, in analysis of the social and economic issues which built the pyre sparked by another sex assault, Dougie Beattie stated:
…the alleged attack on a 14 year old girl, now that isn’t what is at the very heart of this problem… There are other problems in social housing in Northern Ireland… the [government’s contractor] has bought up contracts with all the private landlords and what that has done is reduced the housing stock, but it has also done is set up the price of rent much, much higher.
Because of course the [government] pays much, much more than an ordinary person going to hire a house… [the government’s contractor] has offered all the private landlords twice the rent in order to keep these migrants because, of course, the government is giving them big money to get them out of the hotels.
So what’s happened is the people of Ballymena that lived here, born here, actually can’t get housed here and that too is causing friction in this area.
Epping, if nowhere else, is to avoid this fate even if the Bell migrant hotel remains open for now. The Daily Telegraph cites the remarks of the leader of Epping council, Chris Whitbread, who hailed the victory of the government turning away from the “tone deaf” attempt to buy up property for migrants in the protest-stricken town.
He said:
This is excellent news for our community and residents can breathe a sigh of relief. I wrote with a sense of disbelief when Clearsprings notified us of their intention to procure eight flats in Buckhurst Hill to accommodate asylum seekers.
We’re already hosting two Home Office asylum seeker hotels in the district. The impact of events over the last six months has been deeply felt across our district and has created significant challenges for community cohesion and public safety.
Residents have experienced fear and uncertainty, and the strain on local resources has been considerable. This withdrawal shows Clearsprings and the Home Office have listened to us, seen sense and taken the right decision. We hope they show similar good sense with regards to the Bell Hotel and move to an early closure.
The sex assault of a local girl in Epping earlier this year took on an additional dimension of government failure after the man arrested and convicted for the attack on the 14-year-old, Ethiopian boat migrant Hadush Kebatu, was accidentally released from prison. He was later re-arrested after a days-long manhunt and deported.
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