‘Inadequate’ immigration centres criticised

Four immigration holding centres have been criticised by the prisons inspectorate and described as inadequate.

Chief Inspector of Prisons Anne Owers said that holding facilities at Gatwick Airport, London City Airport and Dover Asylum Screening Centre were unsuitable for overnight stays and had inadequate facilities.

Ms Owers report said that the facilities lacked any means of proper separation of men, women and children being detained. Detainees were found to be sleeping in inadequate conditions, without proper bedding or heating.

There was also a lack of sufficient child protection arrangements at all the centres, while London City Airport’s facility was deemed “unsuitable” for holding children.

The report also found that none of the centres had regular visits from healthcare staff and that there was a lack of suicide and self-harm procedures and training in three of the four centres.

Complaints procedures were also “non-existent”, the report claimed, and record keeping was “irregular”.

The unannounced inspections of the four centres, which are privately owned and managed by GSL UK, were conducted between November 2004 and January 2005. There are 12 short-term immigration holding centres in the UK in total.

Commenting on the report, Ms Owers said: “We have now inspected several short-term holding facilities and have noted some important shortcomings. These facilities are not adequate for the length of time some detainees are being held and we did not find proper child protection procedures in place.”

Ms Owers recommended independent monitoring of the immigration holding facilities in her report.

Responding to the report, Home Office Minister Tony McNulty stressed that the facilities were non-residential holding rooms, which were intended to hold people for brief periods of time – usually no more than a few hours. He said: “It will always be the case that we aim to keep the time an individual spends in these facilities to a minimum, but with arrivals at ports operating 24 hours a day there is a clear need to use holding rooms during the night.”

Mr McNulty continued: “We take the welfare of detainees extremely seriously and as such we recognise that there may be a need to put in place a system of independent monitoring of these short-term detention facilities.

The minister also said that the Home Office ‘did not consider’ children to be a risk of harm in any of the facilities.

He added: “Since these inspections took place in late 2004 and early this year, work has been undertaken to improve conditions in a number of areas raised in this report.”

(KMcA/SP)