Staff at Home Office-funded hotel accused of ‘treating migrant like slave’

Staff at government-contracted hotels have been accused of treating a migrant person in their care “like a slave” and hitting a child, a dossier of complaints obtained by openDemocracy reveals.

Among 11,800 calls made to a helpline that the charity Migrant Help is contracted by the Home Office to provide were 1,400 complaints relating to hotel accommodation. They included allegations of sexual assault within hotels; workers being racist, sexist, and violent; and a staff member “joking” about the Rwanda deportation scheme. Disease outbreaks, food, and a failure to meet basic needs such as arranging transport for medical appointments were also singled out.

Two-thirds (69%) of complaints were made about hotels managed by Home Office subcontractor Clearsprings Ready Homes, one of the leading providers of asylum accommodation in the UK, which has previously faced criticism for cramming asylum seeking people into tiny hotel rooms in London, and for its management of the controversial asylum accommodation at Napier Barracks in Kent, where evidence of ”appalling treatment and conditions” was found.

The government had set a target to end its policy of housing migrant people in hotels by March 2023, with an aim to move people into more permanent housing. Yet 47,500 people are still living in such accommodation.

Nearly two-thirds (64%) of cases we saw were marked as “Internal Process Reviewed (Not Changed)”, meaning no action was taken to resolve complaints concerning hotel accommodation. Of the 1,231 complaints where the action taken was recorded, only five led to migrant people being moved to other accommodation, while 13 complaints were resolved with staff training.

A Home Office spokesperson said it did not recognise the 64% figure.

Aamira*, a mother of one, was housed in a hotel after claiming asylum in the UK. “There was no privacy,” she told openDemocracy. “I had to complain three or four times about staff entering my room.”

Ravishaan Rahel Muthiah, communications director at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI), said clients of the charity had been housed in accommodation with little or no privacy, where “housing managers regularly intrude, and people who are already traumatised by breaches to their privacy are retraumatised”.

Outsourcing for big profits

Complaints against Clearsprings include the staff member ‘joking’ about the Rwanda policy, as well as allegations of racism, harassment and discrimination.

Other complaints linked to staff at Clearsprings hotels include claims about a child being left outside in the cold, a child being hit, and sexual harassment. Clearsprings told openDemocracy it could not comment on individual cases. A Home Office spokesperson said that “following an investigation, no evidence [was] found to suggest that a child was hit by a member of staff or left to stand in the cold outside”, but did not address the other claims.

In 2021, the company, whose “principal activity” is running accommodation for the Home Office, was awarded contracts worth a total of £996m to provide temporary accommodation for asylum seekers in Wales and the south of England until 2029.

Its latest annual accounts show the company increased its profits by more than sixfold in a year to £28,012,487 for the year ending 31 January 2022, while its three directors shared dividends of nearly £28m.

AJ, a member of campaign group One Strong Voice, was housed in a hotel after coming to the UK.

“All too often we hear from those housed in government-contracted hotels of the appalling conditions they are forced to live in – of poor hygiene and the lack of access to basic things like nutritious food,” she said.

‘Like a slave’

Clearsprings was not alone: 369 complaints about hotel accommodation run by Serco were also recorded, while Mears Group PLC received 160 complaints.

Serco has won Home Office contracts worth £2.1bn to provide temporary accommodation for asylum seekers, while Mears has received nearly £1.5bn to do the same.

In May 2022, an asylum seeker housed at a Serco-run hotel in Derby filed a complaint against staff who made “racist remarks”. That July, a migrant person staying at another Serco-run hotel in Liverpool also complained about racist treatment from staff.

Two weeks later, a complaint was logged by a migrant person at a hotel managed by Mears in the north-east. The log reads simply: “Managers in the hotel treating SU [service user] like a slave.”

A spokesperson for Mears told openDemocracy that “we are committed to treating all our service users with dignity and respect” and where issues arise “we do our best to support our service users and resolve them”. It assigns a welfare officer to its hotels.

The complaints data also shows that asylum-seeking people complained about being given dirty razors at a Serco-run hotel in the north-west, and an outbreak of scabies was reported at a Midlands hotel contracted by Serco. The company told openDemocracy that all residents are given access to new toiletries and it worked with the authorities to mitigate the impact of the scabies issue.

A Serco spokesperson said: “The safety and wellbeing of the asylum seekers accommodated by Serco is always our priority. Serco takes a zero-tolerance approach to any inappropriate or abusive behaviour and when there are complaints about our staff or any of the services we provide, they are fully investigated and we are entirely confident that our team responds swiftly to take action when appropriate.”

Serco added that “a number of these complaints are in relation to or as a result of a protracted amount of time spent in contingency accommodation… this is outside of Serco’s control”.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “Where concerns are raised about any aspect of the service delivered by the hotel, we work with the provider to ensure that the concerns are addressed in a timely manner. Supported asylum seekers have access to a Migrant Help 24/7 helpline to raise any concerns regards [sic] the support they receive and are able to make formal complaints which are followed up.”