Clare Golby: Councillors have a duty to protect their residents from asylum hotels

Clare Golby is a former councillor on Warwickshire County Council and Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council

No one could have missed what’s happening in towns and cities up and down our country. People don’t whisper in hushed tones or skirt around it anymore. What was once off-limits pub talk is now everyday conversation. It’s being chewed over in the supermarket queue, picked apart by mums at the school gate, and widely debated on the doorstep.

Immigration. Specifically, the asylum-seeking variety.

According to Home Office figures, a record 109,343 people claimed asylum in the UK in the year ending March 2025, a 17 per cent rise on the year before and the highest number ever recorded. Around 36,000 of those arrived by small boat across the Channel and we’re already set to have another record year. On top of this, as of March 2025, there were still over 50,000 unresolved asylum appeals. Thousands in the system, sometimes for years.

The current Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has pledged to end the use of asylum hotels – some of that is already happening. Not by reducing the record numbers of arrivals, but by dispersing asylum seekers into HMOs on ordinary streets in ordinary towns. Often without consent or, in some cases, even the knowledge of local councils. All at the expense of the British taxpayer.

In July 2025, a Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council report confirmed that nearly 200 asylum seekers have been housed locally at a cost of more than £300,000 to the UK taxpayer. That money pays for space in an already congested system, taken up by people who arguably shouldn’t be here in the first place. It doesn’t conjure up new GP appointments, extra school places, or additional police officers.

Residents pay repeatedly, through taxes and again when they try to access squeezed services.

Nearly 200 asylum seekers – so where are these people? Who is monitoring them? What impact is being had on local services? Are they larger groups or smaller groups? How widely are they dispersed throughout the borough? What are the demographics of these people? Are any of them a risk to the public? The answer to this is yes, but I’ll get to that later. So many questions I would be asking if I were still elected.

When I was deputy leader of Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council, I held the housing and communities brief. I made it clear from day one that our residents came first. Officers would raise asylum housing, usually linked to SERCO, but even with the potential of court action, I’d push back. Every time.

Not because I didn’t rate my officers. I did. But because I refused to assist while property in our borough was hoovered up. Under the current rules, Serco moves fast: offer long term tenancy purchases at full or above market rates – they could rent entire streets if they wanted to and there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. I wasn’t going to enable this or dress it up as “partnership working” while 3,000 local people waited on the housing list, families were living in temporary or hostel accommodation, or while others were rapidly priced out of the private rental market.

My robust approach on a number of things earned me various names. I was branded Nuneaton’s “most extreme right-wing councillor”, and racist. The usual lazy insults. But my job was to do what was right for local families, not to prioritise non-UK nationals because Whitehall told me to—and I would make exactly the same decisions again.

We need to have these difficult conversations. Ask yourself, why are these people coming here?

In 2024 I sat through a Warwickshire County Council meeting where we were told “relationship lessons” were being given to unaccompanied minors because their ‘culture’ is so very different from our own. I’ve put an excerpt on my X (Twitter) feed. These weren’t children in the playground sense. We’re talking 17- and 18-year-old young men. Young adults of fighting age who, we are told, have traversed continents on their own. Apparently, a few PowerPoint slides and a chat delivered by well-meaning social workers would somehow undo years of ingrained cultural attitudes. Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Albania, Syria, Eritrea—all places where women are undoubtedly treated poorly. You can’t unpick that with a flipchart and a smile.

But what do people get for voicing their concerns?

Abuse. “Far right.” “Racist.” “Bigot” – but I know that when the system fails, people get hurt.

And now we’ve seen, in Nuneaton especially, the truly awful reality of what happens when this system fails. A 12-year-old girl allegedly kidnapped and brutally assaulted, two Afghan asylum seekers, Ahmad Mulakhil and Mohammad Kabir, housed in separate HMOs collectively charged with kidnap, strangulation and rape. It’s an appalling case that occurred streets away from where my family live—and one which has left parents across the borough, and the country, looking at their children and wondering how on earth we got to here.

I know not all asylum seekers are bad people. Despite what is depicted in the media I haven’t met anyone who actually believes this. There are genuine cases of people fleeing danger. But it feels like lots aren’t and that the situation is getting worse. This is about protection, not prejudice.

I’ve said it before, the migrant crisis is the Trojan horse of our time dressed up as compassion. It isn’t compassion. It’s a national security and safeguarding disgrace. People of unknown identity placed into streets, with minimal checks, and left largely unsupervised – this is not safety by any definition, especially for women and girls.

I refuse to use my teenage children as a litmus test for whether the men housed down the road are doctors, engineers, or rapists.

Like me, lots of very unhappy people have watched from the sidelines at the degradation of their communities. It’s no wonder people are protesting. The media likes to show the shirtless lads waving flags and swigging cans of lager. What they historically haven’t shown are the women – and it’s the women who are now on the front foot. Mums, sisters, aunts, grandmas. We’re the ones who turn up because we know all too well that the victims of this broken system are more likely to be us, or our daughters, and we’ve had enough.

We’ve been ignored for years. We’ve been talked about but not talked to. When we’ve spoken out, we’ve been told to shut up or barracked by the ‘Refugees Welcome’ placard-waving types with chants of ‘Nazi scum off our streets’.

The truth is simple. These aren’t Nazi Scum, they’re ordinary people who feel under threat because to our country’s borders seem optional. Protection of citizens shouldn’t be optional. Local consent is not.

If Westminster doesn’t wake up to that, people will take matters into their own hands. They already are. And if that happens, it won’t be neat, or polite, or easily controlled.

The saddest part of it all is none of this helps that young 12-year-old girl or others like her. They have already paid the price and unfortunately unless this government takes back control of our borders, our housing, and who is placed in our communities, they will not be the last.