Head of security at Essex centre for disabled asylum seekers removed over alleged far-right views
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YouTube channel apparently belonging to official at Clacton accommodation suggests support for EDL and Tommy Robinson. The head of security at accommodation for vulnerable disabled asylum seekers has been removed from his duties over concerns about his alleged support for the far-right English Defence League and Tommy Robinson, the Guardian has learned.
The asylum seekers, who have a range of disabilities, have been accommodated by the Home Office in a former care home in Nigel Farage’s Clacton constituency in an area where officials from the local Tendring district council have recorded the area’s highest level of hate crimes.
The accommodation is managed by Clearsprings Ready Homes, which last November made profits of £90m from their contract with the Home Office to provide asylum seeker accommodation. A YouTube channel apparently belonging to the security official mentions the term EDL, has a photo of him wearing a red and white England mask favoured by the EDL and other far-right supporters and includes videos featuring Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon..
Clearsprings has also been the subject of two recent court cases involving potential breaches of housing rules. The first was a case against the Home Office for failing to provide suitable accommodation for a five-year-old who has frequent seizures and is fed through a tube, who has been cared for by her mother for an extended period in a hotel room. In the court ruling Clearsprings was criticised for having just 14 wheelchair-accessible properties across the whole of London and more broadly “a lack of appropriately adapted housing stock”. The court ordered the Home Office and Clearsprings to find suitable accommodation for the child.
