Demo over Gatwick Hotel detention centre plans
07.10.09
A demonstration was held yesterday over plans to turn a four-star hotel at Gatwick Airport into an immigration detention centre. Arora Management Services has applied for permission to convert the 254-room Mercure Hotel near the airport's north terminal into a secure removal unit. Campaign group No Borders held a protest inside one of the firm's other hotels near Heathrow.
Arora Management Services submitted a change of use application for the airport hotel to Crawley Borough Council last month. A spokesman said the current economic climate had caused them to look at a variety of options for a number of their buildings, and one option was to turn the Mercure hotel into a detention centre. However, he said that the planning application it had submitted to Crawley council was ‘speculative’.
Rosie Young, of No Borders, told the BBC: ‘I think it is a pretty sick idea to turn a place which is supposed to be a place for visitors to come into a removal centre. Obviously it's very profitable to have a visitors there that can't leave because they are not allow to.’ The Home Office said last week that it had no plans to open a third removal unit near Gatwick Airport.
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