MP and Mayor joint statement on The Waverley Hotel, Whitehaven

 It was announced this week that the Waverley Hotel in Whitehaven will be used as accommodation for Asylum seekers.

Trudy Harrison, MP for Copeland, and Mike Starkie, Elected Mayor of Copeland, issued the following joint statement this week:

“We have very recently been informed of the private arrangement between the Home Office and a new hotel owner, to house asylum seekers in The Waverley Hotel, Whitehaven.

“We would like to make it clear to the public that the council has not received any financial incentive for this initiative, and has not been consulted on the matter, before the agreement was made between the private hotel owner and the contractor for the provision of government services.

“However, we are committed to playing our part, where we can, to secure the best possible outcome for all involved. 

“We are expecting the people to arrive early next week, and now that we are aware of the matter, we will be reaching out to the new hotel owners to ensure all the correct licences are in place, if needed, and will be regularly meeting with the agencies responsible for the programme, to ensure it runs smoothly.

“This includes meetings with Cumbria Constabulary, The Home Office and Cumbria County Council.

“We hope to meet with the asylum seekers personally, to help agencies reinforce our expectations for their stay in the borough and hear their stories.

“We are also speaking to colleagues across the country to learn from their experience and ensure that we have the right things in place for both our residents and visitors, where it is our place to do so.

“We look forward to updating residents as the situation progresses, and we meet the people involved.”


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the...
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more