Policing three recent anti-migrant protests at two Hampshire ports earmarked for small boat arrivals has cost at least £350,000, a council leader has said.
Zoe Huggins, Tory leader of Gosport Borough Council, is now asking the Home Office also pay for the clean-up costs after protests on Sunday night saw residents’ bins set on fire and portable toilets tipped into the street and used as barricades.
She accused the central Government of failing to respond to the local authority’s warnings after 149 migrants from a mega-dinghy were brought ashore at a former Royal Navy sea fort on Sunday evening.
Twelve arrests were made for offences including assaulting police officers after 350 demonstrators gathered near a marina at Fort Blockhouse. A small number of officers were treated at the scene for non-serious injuries.
Nails on road and Portaloo barricades
Two RNLI boats brought the migrants to Fort Blockhouse, the former home of the Royal Navy Submarine Service, at around 10.20pm. The migrants were put on coaches and driven under police escort to be processed in Kent.
Hampshire Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC), Donna Jones, said hundreds of officers were deployed from seven forces including the Metropolitan Police, Kent, Surrey, Dorset and Thames Valley.
Huggins claimed some protesters threw nails on the road and used construction equipment and portable toilets as barricades during Sunday’s protest.
The migrants were on a small boat that was launched from Normandy’s Utah Beach area, around 100 miles away.
It’s the third vessel in recent weeks to use the more dangerous longer route between Normandy and Hampshire – avoiding the shorter but more heavily-policed crossing from around Calais.
A group of migrants being brought into Gosport by the RNLI after a mega-dinghy left Normandy for the UK (Photo: Trevor Adams/PA)Last month, around 140 migrants from a mega-dinghy were brought ashore by the RNLI at Eastney, Portsmouth, sparking disorder that saw eight officers assaulted.
Two weeks later, an attempt to bring around 40 migrants to Gosport was abandoned when hundreds of protesters massed. The Government is preparing contingency proposals to deal with migrant arrivals further down the South Coast from Kent.
On Monday, French authorities said two men died and two women were treated for burns after trying to cross from France in a small boat.
Around 190 people are known to have died attempting the journey across the English Channel since the small boat crisis flared in 2018.
The cost of small boat protests
Huggins told The i Paper she had been informed by the region’s police and crime commissioner that the two operations had cost police around £250,000.
“Last night would have cost about £100,000, and now there is also a cost being borne to the Gosport Borough Council,” she added.
Huggins said a minority of protesters had engaged in “antisocial behaviour” on Sunday.
“We had resident bins on fire, blockades, Portaloos, and construction equipment removed out on to streets, as well as nails in the road,” she said.
“That’s not acceptable. Local residents were fearful and remained inside their houses.”
The council would be asking the Home Office to reimburse it for the cost of a clean-up operation, she said.
Hampshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner has said policing anti-migrant demonstrations is costing £150,000 each time (Photo: Trevor Adams/PA)Ministers ‘ignoring’ migrant concerns
Huggins said there had been no response after the council wrote to the Home Secretary last month raising concerns that Fort Blockhouse was not a suitable location for migrants to come ashore.
“We’re extremely disappointed, and I think it’s disgraceful that the Home Secretary can’t communicate straight to us,” she said.
“The site [Fort Blockhouse] is not suitable for several reasons. I think the Home Office are seeing the site as empty and MoD [Ministry of Defence] land. That should not be their only reason for selecting a site.
“We’ve asked for their full risk assessment. They’ve not responded and given us their evidence.”
The council’s understanding was that the derelict fort, which has no electricity or running water, would not be converted into a permanent processing site.
Instead, migrants would disembark before transfer on coaches to Dover, the Home Office’s main initial processing facility.
‘I just can’t afford it’
Jones, the Conservative PCC for Hampshire, has previously said the policing cost of the anti-migrant protests is around £150,000 each.
Speaking to LBC, Jones said a group called “South Coast Patriots” was involved in Sunday’s protest. She believes most of those arrested were local.
Jones called for all migrants to be taken to Dover instead of Hampshire, and for Border Force to be provided with larger vessels.
“They don’t have the right vessels to be able to transfer people from these these dinghies into their large cutter class ships,” she said.
“It’s not appropriate bringing people onto the beaches anywhere across the South Coast of England. They should be going to Dover.
“My call on the Home Secretary is to equip the UK Border Force and stop relying on the RNLI and stop relying on the police forces. I just can’t afford it.”
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