‘We’re not different to them’ – Skegness migrant worker

No small boats carrying people land on the beaches in Skegness, but a number of hotels on the seafront were used until very recently to house asylum seekers while their claims were being processed.

Hundreds of local residents attended a public meeting about the topic, amid concerns the area had become a “dumping ground”.

The vast majority of those seeking asylum have since been moved out of the hotels, but locally concerns about the impact of migration remain.

Julieanne Bunce, who runs the North Parade Hotel, says “it caused a lot of issues for a lot of people”.

“They didn’t cause us any bother at all,” she says, but adds: “The sense generally within the Skegness area was that people didn’t want them here.”

But Gary Dee, owner of the Hatters Hotel, says he lost hundreds of bookings because of the presence of asylum seekers in the town.

“Tensions run high in Skegness regards the immigrants. They completely destroyed the town centre. Immediately as they started to arrive we lost hundreds and hundreds of bookings, along with everybody else in the town,” he says.

Gary sees immigration as having put pressure on local services like the NHS. “We’re only a small island, we can’t afford to keep funding these things. The NHS is breaking. You can’t see your doctors,” he says.

For Gary, the strain it has put on Skegness is too much, particularly the presence of asylum seekers over the past couple of years.

“To have four or five hundred illegal immigrants – and that’s the key word, they are illegal – wandering up and down in flip-flops and on their phones when they’re supposed to have no money. It puts people off.

“And it has put people off for three years,” he continues.

“We’ve just not recovered, and with that in mind we put our place on the market.”