It cost more than £1m to police long-running protests outside a controversial hotel in west Wales which wanted to shut up shop and house more than 240 asylum seekers, it has been revealed. In May 2023 it was confirmed that Stradey Park Hotel in Llanelli would close and become a home to asylum seekers in a plan signed off by both the hotel’s owners and the UK Home Office.
Despite widespread criticism and legal challenges, opposition fell on deaf ears and the proposal was rubber-stamped, with asylum seekers set to move in to the premises over the summer. This led to long-standing protests taking place outside the hotel, with many people maintaining a presence at the venue’s front entrance for months. This in turn resulted in a large police presence being visible at the hotel, with several arrests being made and numerous people appearing in court charged with offences relating to incidents at the site.
Ultimately, in October, the Home Office shelved its plans and confirmed that the hotel would not, after all, be housing asylum seekers. However, the cost would prove to be significant. You can read more about the whole affair here. You can keep up to date with the latest Carmarthenshire news by signing up to the local newsletter here.
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A Freedom of Information request made by the BBC to Dyfed-Powys Police revealed that policing the protests outside Stradey Park Hotel cost the force £1,165,000 - more than three times a previous estimate. The total cost has been criticised by a local protest group, who have said the Home Office, rather than Dyfed-Powys Police and the local taxpayer, should foot the bill.
“We are not surprised at the massive cost of policing protests at the Stradey Park Hotel,” said Robert Lloyd, spokesperson for the Furnace Action Committee, which was set up early last summer after the initial plans for the hotel were announced. “The Dyfed-Powys police and crime commissioner Dafydd Llywelyn said at the end of October that police costs were estimated to be £300,000. We always knew this to be hasty guess as our committee contains members with vast experience of how police expenditure can mount up on such a large operation. They always reckoned it to be well over a million pounds and the BBC’s FoI has now shown this to be the case. It is very sad to reflect that none of this expenditure was in any way necessary.
“As a committee, we made it very clear at the outset of the campaign in June that the plan to house asylum seekers at the Stradey Park Hotel was deeply flawed. We made our case to the hotel owners, Clearsprings Ready Homes (the chosen operators of the site) and the UK Home Office that no proper due diligence had been carried out at the site. There was a massive human cost to closing down a four-star hotel (one of the jewels in Carmarthenshire’s crown), with the consequent loss of nearly 100 jobs and associated pain for suppliers to the hotel. Unfortunately, there was an arrogance about the Home Office/Clearpsprings plan, where they were determined to pursue their agenda, no matter what the pain on the local community of Furnace and Llanelli. As the campaign wore on, that arrogance turned into sheer bloody-mindedness as they sought to impose a plan, which, like the Titanic, was holed well below the waterline and doomed to failure. Finally, the Home Office conceded defeat on October 10 last year. They’d have saved a fortune in public money if they’d accepted the reality of their flawed plan back on June 10.”
Stradey Park Hotel has been asked to comment on the concerns raised by the Furnace Action Committee, but nobody at the hotel has responded at the time of publication. The hotel’s owners now want to reopen the venue to the public and restore it to its former four-star glory. They have, thus far, not confirmed when the hotel is due to reopen.
Mr Lloyd added: “We recognise this was never a Welsh plan, never a Dyfed-Powys plan, never a Carmarthenshire plan. It was always a barmy, half-baked project cooked up in the Home Office in London. With that in mind, the Furnace Action Committee will be encouraging the Dyfed-Powys police and crime commissioner to reclaim ALL of the policing costs from the Home Office. It was a Home Office mistake. They must pay up to stop the burden of these policing costs being passed on to the taxpayers of Carmarthenshire and Dyfed-Powys. Meanwhile, the work of the Furnace Action Committee is continuing. We continue to keep a watchful eye on refurbishing work to bring the hotel back into use. We continue to urge the hotel owners to return the hotel to active duty as a four-star venue as quickly as possible – and to re-employ as many former staff who want to work there as quickly as they can.
“We are particularly keen that the owners of the hotel, Gryphon Leisure/Sterling Woodrow/ Avora Capital, accept their responsibilities as major employers and honour their promise to re-open the hotel as a four-star operation as quickly as possible. The whole mad project started with the owners approaching the Home Office with the idea of using the hotel for asylum seekers. The owners now need to rebuild bridges with the local community and re-open very soon to ease further speculation about the future of the hotel. The cost to the community of this ill-conceived plan has been huge. Don’t forget that there is the hidden cost of loss of tourism revenue for Llanelli and Carmarthenshire.”
A spokesperson for the Home Office said on Monday: “The government is making significant progress with moving asylum seekers out of hotels, which cost UK taxpayers £8.2million a day. We have already exited the first 50 and we will exit more in the coming months. We are committed to ensuring the police have the tools they need to keep the public safe and have confirmed a total police funding settlement of up to £18.4 billion in 2024-25 - including up to £148.0 million for Dyfed-Powys Police. Decisions about how funding and resources are utilised is a matter for individual Police and Crime Commissioners.”
A spokeswoman for Dyfed-Powys Police said: "We fully recognised the concerns the plans to house asylum seekers at the Stradey Park Hotel presented to the community. The overall aim of the policing operation was to work effectively with partners to manage tensions in the community and balance the rights of all people affected by the proposed change of use of the hotel. There were significant tensions in the community at this time, and Neighbourhood Policing officers were a fundamental part of the policing response - which included engagement with community groups and protestors.
"The nature and duration of the protest meant this was a challenging policing operation, and it was necessary to deploy specially trained public order officers from across the force to prevent violence and stop people from getting hurt. Unfortunately, there were occasions when violence was used and serious damage was caused to property. Accordingly, we took all reasonable action, including the arrest and charge of a number of people. The force will always seek to facilitate lawful peaceful protest while balancing it with the rights of others, keeping the public safe and preventing crime and disorder."
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