A SADDLEWORTH Councillor is to press for a challenge to contracts over accommodation for asylum seekers.
Authorities in Essex’s Epping Forest and Great Yarmouth in Norfolk have launched bids to stop hotels being used for housing people in that situation.
Now Saddleworth South Conservative Cllr Max Woodvine will ask Oldham Council to do likewise at its meeting on Wednesday, November 12.
In a motion he will table, it says: “This council should follow their lead in seeking legal advice and challenging Home Office contracts to provide migrant housing in Oldham.”
Among points backing it, it will be pointed out that in 2025, 25,000 people have crossed the English Channel, ‘leaving immigration policy under this government in tatters.’
It will also be noted that since Labour came to power, there have been a record 111,000 asylum claims, claims for refugee status have hit a record high and there has been an eight per cent rise in the use of hotel accommodation for asylum seekers.
Cllr Woodvine’s motion wants local communities to be properly consulted before significant decisions are made that impact local services, housing and community cohesion.
It will also ask Oldham Council to agree the use of local hotels as long-term accommodation for migrants is not a sustainable solution and places disproportionate pressures on local infrastructure and services.
And it will call on chief executive Shelley Kipling, in consultation with the director of legal and legal services, to urgently assess the merits of seeking an injunction to prevent the use of local hotels for migrant accommodation where it is deemed to be in the best interests of the community.
The motion will also ask that officers are instructed to consider every option and seek legal advice on using injunctions, stop notices and other planning enforcement against change of use to close asylum hotels in the council area, and prevent them from being opened.
A call to write to the Secretary of State for the Home Office expressing Oldham Council’s concerns about the use of hotels and non-hotel accommodation, in the area will also be made, along with asking the government to develop a sustainable, properly planned, and community consulted approach to housing migrants.
Immigration is set to be a big topic at the meeting, with new Reform UK Cllr Lewis Quigg tabling a motion simply titled ‘Stop The Boats.’
That will also ask the authority to ‘seek all necessary legal instruments and/or injunction/s and or any legal measures as necessary to prevent the use of local hotels or HMOs for migrant accommodation in the Borough of Oldham.’
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