Crawley Council Rejects Plans for Deportation Centre Near Gatwick

The Crawley Council is announcing that there is no current need for a new UK immigration deportation section. Plans to construct a unit near the Gatwick Airport in the UK out of an old hotel building no longer in use have been shot down by the council. The centre would have become the local UK immigration custody and deportation offices for all nearby airports.

Arora Management Services, the company responsible for the construction, had submitted a request to reform the Mercure Hotel, no longer in use, into a fully functional detention facility for detained or awaiting deportation offenders. However, the Crowley Borough Council turned down the proposal stating that it was a frivolity.

According to the council there is no current need for such a detention centre. At present, there are already two existing detainment facilities of this kind in Gatwick’s nearby vicinity. Both are run and operated by UK immigration officials causing the council to reject plans for a third facility of such a kind.

The major issue was that residents in the neighbourhood had spoken out about the arrival of a deportation centre and had strongly voiced concerns about the renovation of the hotel as the centre would have required a high security fence bringing an unnecessary eyesore into the residential area.

UK immigration has had a myriad of new proposals in the wake of the 23-year old Nigerian student living in the UK on a student visa tried to blow up a Northwestern airlines plane headed from
Amsterdam to Detroit. Other new changes include UK border patrol agents being granted permission to deny entry on student visas based on suspicions that visas are not valid.