A hotel housing migrants has been linked to more than 200 crimes by police during the past five years. The Britannia Hotel in Seacroft, Leeds, is believed to be home to around 210 asylum seekers and was one of the first to be taken over by the Home Office.
Residents living near the hotel made a Freedom of Information request to West Yorkshire Police as to how many crimes had been committed there from January 2021 until last December. It revealed that 202 offences had been committed on the site – including sex attacks, arson, drug offences and violence. During this period, there were 11 sexual offences reported, and 25 of arson and criminal damage.
There were 79 offences of violence against the person, 44 public order offences and 12 theft offences.
There were also small numbers of reported burglaries, drug offences, possession of weapons, vehicle offences, and robbery.
Marti Blagborough, who founded the Stand Up Leeds (SUL) group that made the FOI request, said: “People in Seacroft are deeply concerned after official data from West Yorkshire Police showed dozens of recorded crimes at the Britannia Hotel.
“These include violence, sexual offences, public disorder, theft, and criminal damage — all recorded at one location in our community. This isn’t about scaremongering. It’s about safety.”
He added: “We all deserve to feel safe where we live. Our community deserves transparency and protection.
“This hotel should have shut down after the first year when there were six sexual assaults. How many crimes have gone unreported? We want the hotel closed and all illegals deported.”
The SUL group released a statement to the Sunday Express saying it believes the convictions revealed in the FOI request do not show the “true scale of offending”.
It added: “All involved care deeply about our community and want only to see it safe for our families to grow up in.
“We will continue to protest outside the hotel until a time comes that there are no undocumented migrants posing a risk to our community.”
The police figures do not include an alleged sex attack on two teenage girls at the back of a supermarket in Seacroft on December 30 last year.
A Home Office spokesman said: “New rules announced this week mean asylum seekers who break the law will now be kicked out of accommodation and stripped of support payments.”
He added that a Public Safety Operational Response Team had conducted a review of the site iast October.
It concluded that criminality and disorder associated with the site was largely driven by the actions of non-residents rather than the behaviour of those accommodated on-site.
Asylum seekers have disproportionately been the victims of crimes recorded at the Britannia Hotel, the team added.
