Building company is renovating dilapidated properties as apartment blocks
Locals in a tiny UK town facing a housing shortage have reacted with fury to plans to use eight houses to house refugees. As a sign of protest, houses were vandalized, the police had to increase patrols.
Photo: AP.< /span>
Properties in the remote seaside town of Millom in the UK, where a house with a terrace can be bought for less than 100 thousand £, will be converted into Homes for Multiple Occupancy (HMO). According to plans, the houses will be used to accommodate about 40 refugees from abroad.
Earlier, graffiti appeared on the wall of one of the houses being renovated, on which it was written in large black letters: “We are not welcome.” This prompted police to increase patrols in the area and the city council to appeal for calm in the area.
Angry locals say there is no infrastructure to accommodate the refugees, the local police station is closed and government services are failing. Opponents of the development add that the property was bought up en masse by developers, who then sought lucrative government contracts to redevelop it. They point out that residents already struggle to get GP appointments, there are no dentists, the nearest fully staffed police station is 45 minutes away, hospitals are at least 40 minutes away and 112 local families are on a waiting list for rental housing.
One local resident said: “It is almost impossible to get a dentist appointment in Millom anymore. The only dentist in town is not accepting new NHS patients and is forced to wait a long time for private patients. Also, getting an appointment with a GP is not easy, you have to be quick to get an appointment and it's a case of queuing on the phone and hoping that you can get to the doctor on the appointed day, but often you can't “.
The property company's investment video showed the developer giving a tour of the site, describing: “We're going to turn this house into six-bedroom social housing. Once the house is ready, we will have a long term rental, guaranteed income, no maintenance and no voids.”
Local residents who watched the BH Property Investments video formed a group called Millom Community Action Group to oppose this scheme on the grounds that the city's infrastructure cannot cope with the influx of tourists, and are calling for measures to be taken to stop it.
Security adviser Dean Myers explained: “I have been accused of racism for speaking out against this, but nothing could be further from the truth. It's not about race or prejudice, that's not what Millom is talking about, and the action group was really disappointed by the graffiti and vandalism. We understand that feelings are heated to the limit, the city has turned into a powder keg, but this kind of action does not solve anything, and we do not want to see it. Millom – the movement to stop housing asylum seekers here is solely due to the fact that the city does not have the facilities and infrastructure to support them.”
Council chairman and former postmaster Ged McGrath claims many more homes could have been affected as more than 20 applications were submitted for HMO conversions.
“The council has managed to persuade many developers to change their minds, but there is still a significant number of properties The property is in various stages of refurbishment and I understand why people are concerned,” comments McGrath.
Mayor Simone Faulkner said: “This only came to light because people started talking to the contractors working on the houses and they were the ones who warned people that asylum seekers would be living there. We have heard nothing from the companies contracted to house asylum seekers and this has all happened without any consultation.”
She added that “the council has received complaints from local residents about the proposal. The Home Office has contracted with Serco to disperse refugees across the North West, including the Cumberland region. If the Council has concerns about an area, access to services, crime levels or transport links, we can raise these with Serco. However, Serco may still decide to continue procurement.”
“The Home Office has a responsibility to provide safe accommodation for asylum seekers and we continue to work closely with the local authority in Millom to manage any impact in the area and solve the problems of local communities,” said a spokesman for the British Home Office.
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