There's concerns over the future of hotels in Skegness as some of those housing asylum seekers are no longer required by the Home Office
It comes after the Immigration Minister and Newark MP Robert Jenrick confirmed that 2 of the hotels in the coastal town will have their residents removed in the coming weeks as they look to use alternative sites
Locals in Skegness fear that some hotels will be left deserted without the need from the Home Office to use them to house asylum seekers.
Yesterday the Immigration Minister and Newark MP Robert Jenrick confirmed that 2 of the hotels in the coastal town will have their residents moved to alternative sites.
The Boston and Skegness MP Matt Warman says there needs to be a focus on rebuilding tourism in the area:
"The numbers fluctuate a little bit, but at its peak we had around 250 people asylum seekers in Skegness, and around 100 in the South of the constituency as well. But what we're looking at now, is those numbers will be down to around 100 to 110 in Skegness.
"So a really big change there, a change in the right direction and a much smaller decrease in the South of the constituency, but down to a decent under 100. So everything is currently going in the right direction. That's to be welcomed, and as I said in Parliament yesterday, the focus has to be on returning those hotels to their proper use."
"There are two things. The first is that we hear from hoteliers time and time again that people want to come to Skegness, but they often do ask, and they sometimes do cancel their bookings if they hear that they might be near hotels, housing illegal asylum seekers.
"So it has had a real big reputational issue, and it needs a reputational shift. But of course, there's also the simple fact that these are effectively hotels being used as hostels, which they're not, and they're not having the sort of pleasant impact on the local surroundings that a good, well run local hotel would normally. So there's there's a reputational issue and there's a very practical issue too."
He added that some of these hotels could be left as an "eyesore" to the town:
"Well, I think the owners of the hotels - in some cases, up and down the country - have bought them specifically for this purpose, and it's good that it's turned out to be a relatively short lived purpose. But those owners, I don't think have ever been interested in running them as traditional hotels.
"So what I hope will happen and what the Home Office will try and work with them to do, is either return them to their proper use or pass them on to new owners and so there is work to do, on making sure that these do not simply become derelict eyesores on the sea front.
"But I'm confident that obviously, they are real assets and people know that there is a good living to be made in Skegness tourism, and we see that across the constituency as well."
Immigration Minister and MP for Newark Robert Jenrick has announced the number of hotels used to house migrants will be cut by 50 over the next three months.
Mr Jenrick told MPs the process of "exiting" the first tranche of accommodation will begin in the coming days.