A MILLIONAIRE LANDLORD FROM KENT IS CASHING IN ON THE ABYSMAL, POW LIKE CONDITIONS OF THE PENALLY REFUGEE CAMP WHILST THE PEOPLE INSIDE STRUGGLE TO SURVIVE ENFORCED SQUALOR.
CONDITIONS INSIDE THE DISUSED BARRACKS HAVE BECOME SO DIRE THAT LEGAL FIRMS HAVE HAD TO STEP IN, LAUNCHING ACTION AGAINST CLEARSPRINGS WITH CREDIBLE ACCUSATIONS OF “FALSE IMPRISONMENT”.
EMAILS SEEN BY VOICE.WALES BETWEEN THE RESIDENTS UNION AND THE OPERATOR DETAIL THE DIRE STATE OF CONDITIONS IN THE CAMP.
By Mark S Redfern
The millionaire executives that operate the Penally refugee camp have let the camp fall to possibly criminal levels of neglect, an announced legal bid and emails acquired by voice.wales show.
The emails sent by the newly-established union Camp Residents of Penally (CROP) to the operator of the barracks detail the dire extent of the food and facilities, as well as “antagonistic” staff, faced by the fenced-off migrants put in the small town near Tenby.
London-based solicitors Duncan Lewis have also filed a legal battle against the Home Office to hold it to account for “deprivation of liberty” for their ongoing use of the Penally camp.
Clearsprings is the company in charge of the facility at Penally through their subsidiary company Clearsprings Ready Homes, and have operated similar asylum centres across the UK.
The company has faced fierce criticism before in Wales, when one of their Cardiff premises was found to be forcing asylum seekers to wear bright-red wristbands to claim food from the shelter in 2016.
“The use of the wristband to get a meal is humiliating,” said one of the refugees subjected to the practice at the time, and the practice was denounced by the Welsh Refugee Council as “stigmatising”.
Still, the company has been going from financial strength to strength, with new research from non-profit group Corporate Watch showing that over the last five years Clearsprings Ready Homes made £5.8 million.
The report also points out that a £4 million dividend was paid to its parent company, solely owned by a Kent property executive Graham King.
This isn’t King’s only business; the boss owns consultancy, telecommunications, and taxi companies alongside taking public money to house vulnerable asylum seekers in barely habitable accommodation.
The people living inside the Penally camp have been kept in such poor conditions that their newly-established union, Camp Residents of Penally (CROP), has written to Ready Homes, a subsidiary of Clearsprings and operator of the camp, detailing various issues.
In the letter seen by voice.wales the men describe the sustenance given to them, with breakfast the same everyday and consisting of two options: hard-boiled eggs or porridge.
Other meals given to the residents consist of under-boiled rice and chicken which hasn’t been fully plucked, but they are quick to point out that food prep “can be done properly” when outside agencies are there to check on the conditions.
No allowance is made for the service users’ lack of English, and signs are not written in different languages identifying which meals are vegetarian and meat-based, alongside what they describe as “antagonistic behaviour” when some staff talk to residents.
Even the smallest of comforts – kettles newly purchased and donated by local charities – have been confiscated despite CROP claiming that all appliances had been checked on entering the camp.
The letters also show the benefits of the union for camp residents, however, as some issues such as increased harassment from security staff and access to certain facilities improved after the union formally raised them. But many serious problems remain, including lack of access to drinking water, frequently blocked toilets and the mixing of Covid bubbles by site management moving residents around. They are also threatened with what one resident described as ‘collective punishment’ if one person causes any issues.
A legal bid has now been launched against Clearsprings in an effort to push the contractor to improve conditions through the courts, as human decency has not seemed to be enough of a motivator for the company.
A statement from Duncan Lewis Solicitors claims that the men housed in the camp have experienced a “hostile” environment, haven’t been given enough cash to buy basic toiletries, and that volunteer organisations have had to step in to give the men “blankets and coats” as the winter months arrive.
The law firm also alleges that the “expedient” move to house the migrants in barracks rather than more comfortable accommodation was as a result of “the attention on the Home Office’s decision to house asylum seekers in hotels.”
They continue: “It appears that the Home Office only informed the Welsh Government, the Hywel Dda University Health Board and other local stakeholders, days before the first asylum seekers arrived at the Camp.”
It’s also claimed that the migrants being housed there were being subjected to “false imprisonment” and “deprivation of liberty” due to the danger of far-right and facsist activists, in addition to the camp being “surrounded by barbed wire fences with locked gates, manned by guards, with an effective curfew between 10pm and 10am.”
As the residents continue to fight for the most basic of living standards they are being assisted by outside charities and local community action groups.
The men remind Clearsprings and their comfortable executives in their letter that they have a right to safety and dignity, some of them having suffered “traumatic memories of being behind razor-wire-topped detention camp fences”.
Clearsprings has been contacted for comment.
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