Petition Calls For Action For Brighton & Hove's Missing Children

A campaign group has called on Brighton and Hove City Council to come up with a “plan of action” to keep unaccompanied asylum-seeking children safe.

Homes Not Hotels started a petition asking the council to recognise that it had failed the 136-plus children who went missing from a hotel used by the government to house unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.

Campaign member Hermione Berendt, 27, presented the petition, which attracted 144 signatures, to the council’s Children, Young People and Skills Committee at Hove Town Hall today (Monday 6 March).

Ms Berendt told councillors that the group had organised three demonstrations, the largest of which was attended by more than 500 people and was featured on local and national news.

She said:

“We want to get one thing clear. We know the council is not to blame for what happened and ultimately the blame lies with our government and the Home Office.

“But the local authorities could have done more to challenge what was happening when the hotels first opened and the children first started to go missing.

“We all could have – and we can’t bear to hear anyone else say we are sad and angry but it’s not our responsibility.

“We appreciate what has been done thus far with the scrutiny report and emergency meeting – and I’m sure more is being done behind the scenes.

“What we’re asking for is that, alongside (Hove) MP Peter Kyle, Brighton and Hove City Council publicly commits to taking decisive action to shut down the hotel and prevent it from ever being used to house vulnerable children in this manner again.

“We need the council and professionals to step in. We know the Home Office don’t have the best interest of the children at heart and, without external pressure, ultimately they will carry on with business as usual.”

Green councillor Hannah Allbrooke, who chairs the Children, Young People and Skills Committee, said that placing unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in hotels was a “terrible way” to treat them.

She said that the council had a responsibility to be involved when young people went missing although it was Sussex Police who had a duty to try to find missing children.

Councillor Allbrooke said:

“This council has continued to work to close the hotels for asylum-seekers, including the (unaccompanied asylum-seeking children) hotel which is currently not operating.

“To understand responsibility in this crucial matter, we need to understand the recent history of it.

“As a local authority, we do not run the hotel. It is the Home Office who opened it … the Home Office that provides the staffing. But despite this, we have continued to challenge its operation.

“We received less than 24 hours’ notice that the hotel was opening back in July 2021, having been advised that it was ‘temporary’.

“It followed Kent County Council advising they could no longer provide interim care for the sheer numbers of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, or ‘UASCs’, arriving in this country, primarily through Dover.

“A week before the hotel had been opened, Greens sounded the alarm at a meeting of the full council.

“We pointed to our concerns regarding care for (unaccompanied asylum-seeking children) and how many other councils did not meet their moral obligations to provide care for them through the ‘national transfer scheme’.”

Councillor Allbrooke said that the Brighton and Hove Safeguarding Children Partnership published a scrutiny paper reviewing the council, police and NHS response to children going missing from the Hove hotel.

She said that the review said that the council, police and Home Office had worked in partnership to care for the children and to try to keep them safe.

Councillor Allbrooke added:

“The scrutiny paper makes clear that there needs to be planning for the summer ahead.

“We know that the number of small boat crossings will increase as the weather gets warmer and we know that this may put more young people at risk.

“In the meantime, this council will continue to play its part. But I would urge everyone to put their fire instead on the government who are responsible for this situation.

“It is the government who have created a hostile environment to refugees and who are, if you believe the news reports today, now proposing to break UN conventions towards refugees.

“It is the government who have failed to create a better solution for caring for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.

“It is the government who have failed to address the chronic shortages in care placements for young people, meaning that councils turn the other way.

“We will always do our bit to care for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (including) through challenging the Home Office in every possible avenue.

“We won’t always do it publicly and indeed we haven’t throughout the past 19 months but we give our commitment to communities that we will do what we can.”