Owners of hotel turn down £500,000 to house migrants: 'It would put tourists off'

The owners of a hotel in Skegness have revealed they turned down £500,000 from the government to house migrants.

Gary and Dee Allen, who own the Hatters Hotel in the seaside resort, told GB News that they refused the offer from the government to completely close down so that migrants could stay in the rooms.

But the couple said their "morals and beliefs" stopped them from accepting the offer of £132,000 every 13 weeks to stay closed.

Mr Allen said: "When we bought this hotel there wasn't any migrants or illegal immigrants in this town – within a year the whole scene has changed.

"Bringing so many migrants into this town would put tourists off, it would be known as a refugee town."

Mrs Allen added: "We would never be a part of the contribution of what is going on."

The couple previously said they were offered an "obscene" sum of £10,000 a week to house asylum seekers for at least three months.

But Mrs Allen, who bought the hotel with her husband 18 months ago, told Lincolnshire Live that they had refused as "we would never, ever do that to the community".

Watch: 'Shortage of safe and legal routes' for migrants, Suella Braverman told

She added: "We'll plough through and if we fall on the ground and hit rock bottom, that will be it.

"We will never, ever, ever accept the money."

Read more: UK must wean itself off 'immigration dependency', Starmer says

At least five hotels in Skegness have reportedly accepted the Home Office offer as the government attempts to deal with the number of migrants arriving into the country on small boats.

The Refugee Council has previously spoke out against migrants being housed in hotels as those staying in such accommodation face "barriers and delays when they raise problems with relevant authorities".

It said in a report that "hotel accommodation is increasingly damaging people's health and wellbeing, causing depression and suicidal ideation", adding that the maximum stay should be 35 days.

The Refugee Council also criticised the use of hotels as "having an impact on accommodation providers", and urged the government to move migrants to "community-based dispersal accommodation without delay".

The Home Office has previously admitted that the "short-term solution" of using hotels to accommodate asylum seekers was "unacceptable", and that it was costing the taxpayers £5.6m a day to house over 37,000 asylum seekers.

It comes as new figures released on Thursday suggest that net migration to the UK has climbed to a record half a million, driven by a series of "unprecedented world events" including the war in Ukraine and the end of lockdown restrictions.

A total of 1.1 million people are likely to have migrated to the UK in the year to June, the majority – 704,000 – from outside the EU.

Around 504,000 more people are estimated to have moved to the UK than left in the 12 months to June 2022, up sharply from 173,000 in the year to June 2021, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The figures add more pressure on home secretary Suella Braverman, who admitted on Wednesday that the government has failed to control the UK’s borders – but she blamed migrants crossing the Channel for overcrowding at the Manston processing centre in Kent.

She also struggled to explain the legal routes which asylum seekers fleeing war and persecution could use to come to the UK, prompting criticism that she was "out of her depth" and did not understand her own policies.

Tory MP Lee Anderson told Braverman more asylum seekers are being housed in hotels because "the Home Office has failed to control our borders and it’s not fit for purpose at the moment".

She replied: "We have failed to control our borders, yes. That’s why the prime minister and myself are absolutely determined to fix this problem."