A councillor is calling for legal action to close a hotel housing unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.
Labour councillor Bella Sankey is putting the proposal to a special Brighton and Hove City Council meeting with more than 136 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children having gone missing from the area since July 2021.
Her motion also calls for all youngsters who are currently at the hotel to go into council care placements across the country.
Councillor Sankey said: “The national press has reported whistle-blower and child protection testimony stating that serious organised crime have targeted these children, kidnapping them from the hotel where they have been abandoned.
“This catastrophic breakdown in child safeguarding shames our great city and undermines our status as a City of Sanctuary.”
Councillor Sankey, who is a trained lawyer and human rights campaigner, wants the council to instruct external legal experts in public, immigration, asylum and human rights law.
She wants an expert opinion on the council’s obligations under the Children Act 1989 and the legal options for closing the hotel and rehousing the young people.
And she is calling for a “child safeguarding practice review panel” to investigate the council’s role in the disappearance of the children, including all safeguarding acts and omissions.
Out of the 136 or more youngsters missing from Hove, 76 remain unaccounted for.
When Councillor Sankey raised the issue at a meeting of the full council in December, Green leader Phélim Mac Cafferty said that he had repeatedly challenged the Home Office on the issue.
Green deputy leader Hannah Allbrooke, who chairs the council’s Children, Young People and Skills Committee, said: “We wrote to the Home Secretary within 24 hours of hearing that they had placed the first hotel in this city without the consent or knowledge of this council.
“I am and continue to be very worried about the Home Office’s response to providing care to vulnerable children.”
Last month, a senior safeguarding official shared figures indicating that 62 children, or almost half of those who had vanished, went missing in just two months last year – August and September.
More than 90 per cent of the children who had gone missing were Albanian, possibly because they were “disenfranchised” by the asylum process, according to the official, Justin Grantham.
The special council meeting is due to start at 4pm on Thursday 2 March at Brighton Town Hall. The meeting is scheduled to be webcast on the council’s website.
Sadly, contempt remains here for [“fake”] refugees, many of whom are rightfully despondent.
These human beings don’t willfully/contently become permanent financial/resource burdens on their host nation. They do want to pull their own weight through employment, even if only to prove their detractors wrong.
And, by the way, what happened to our ‘Christian charity and compassion’?
They should be treated humanely, but often enough are not.
If they feel they must, critics of such refugees should get angry at the politicians who supposedly allow in ‘too many’. Don’t criticize desperate people for doing what we’d likely all do if in their dreadful position.
Are there no photos of those missing? Surely that would be helpful to identify them? Shouldn’t there be more effort going into finding them, or knowing what happened to them?
This was a critical failing of the Home Office, showing incompetence in caring for vulnerable individuals at the highest levels. Whilst shutting down the building is the easiest option, I am not convinced it is the right one, but rather addressing the weaknesses that led to these incidents happening, otherwise we are doomed to repeat it.
Benjamin
Interesting comments from you and those from cllrs.
I will start of with cllr Sankey and ask if she has looked into this and discovered for herself the true facts.
I would then challenge leader Phélim Mac Cafferty who claims that he had repeatedly challenged the Home Office on the issue.
I would then challenge cllr Allbrooke on her comment “We wrote to the Home Secretary within 24 hours of hearing that they had placed the first hotel in this city without the consent or knowledge of this council.
Really Hannah, very strange because In a damning report dated 19 August 2021, on the BHCC own website is the following headline.
Council leader declares his solidarity with Afghan refugees.
Leader of the Council Phélim Mac Cafferty has declared his support for the newly announced Afghanistan Refugee Resettlement Scheme and ongoing commitment to being a City of Sanctuary.
“Brighton & Hove has a proud history of solidarity and welcome for refugees and the city council stands ready to help Afghan refugees and support the desperately needed Afghanistan Refugee resettlement scheme announced by the government.
Showing incompetence is absolutely bang on where ‘Greens’ are concerned, proving once again how often they lie or can’t remember what they’ve said and don’t even consult one another.