Outside Hoylake's migrant hotel, tensions are rising

Dear readers — last summer, we reported from the front lines of the Southport riot, a clash between protesters and police that eventually spread across the country. A year on, echoes of that tumult can be heard at demonstrations in Epping and Islington, where protesters have expressed their discontent outside hotels repurposed to house migrants and asylum seekers. The head of police watchdog, Constabulary, has warned there is now “every possibility” of a repeat of the 2024 summer riots, and an Ipsos poll has revealed more than 81% believe Britain is a divided society. 

Last week, a social media post by local Conservative councillors warned that the King’s Gap Hotel in Hoylake would soon see its current occupants — mostly migrant families waiting for ‘leave to remain’ status — moved out to make way for single men. This Home Office plan, since confirmed by Wirral Council, has resulted in protests, counter protests, and (to date) four arrests. Residents of Hoylake, an affluent town on Merseyside’s Dee-facing coast, will be hoping their home does not become a national story for all the wrong reasons. 

To find out what’s going on at the King’s Gap, we sent Laurence Thompson to speak to both sides of the issue, and try to gauge how bad this already febrile situation could get. Over the course of a protest, Laurence talks with concerned locals, far-right sympathisers, and antifascist demonstrators to get a handle on the debate, and finds a more complicated picture than you might expect. Both sides’ inability — or unwillingness — to understand each other’s complaints does not appear promising. 

That’s today’s story. But first, your regularly scheduled Post briefing.

Your Post briefing

Plans to build up to 23 homes on green belt land in Sefton have been approved despite hundreds of objections from residents. Sefton Council has granted permission to redevelop the Shorrock’s Hill nightclub site in Formby, which closed 20 years ago, as well as the green space next to the site, locally known as Falcon’s Crest. When plans were first unveiled, over 800 letters of objection were submitted to the local authority, as well as five petitions, calling the development a “land grab” that did not provide an appropriate mix of housing for the area. Planning officers at the council have since said the development "outweigh[s] the harm arising from the loss of existing trees and the absence of a housing mix".

Around 40 people suspected to have taken part in mass rioting prompted by the Southport murders are still wanted by the authorities. A new website has been set up by police forces across the UK with images of the suspects, who are thought to be from across five local authorities: Merseyside, Greater Manchester, Cleveland, Northumbria and Avon and Somerset. So far, a total of 1,876 arrests have been made in relation to the riots last summer with 1,110 charged so far. Assistant Chief Constable Ian Drummond-Smith, who led the response to investigating the riots, is now asking the public to browse the website “to see if they recognise anyone." "We have a duty to facilitate protest but what we saw last year, and in a few isolated cases this year, is where it's gone to criminality and to serious disorder,” he said.

And the Nelson Mandela memorial in Princes Park has been vandalised just days after being reopened. The memorial bridge was first unveiled to the public in 2023, but was damaged after being pushed into the park’s lake. It was repaired and moved to the entrance of the Mandela memorial garden, however Mandela 8 – the community organisation that commissioned the bridge — have now said vandals have damaged it again. 

Hoylake is not the kind of place you might expect an anti-migrant protest. Home to the world-famous Royal Liverpool Golf Club, and with an average house price of around £350,000, the seaside town on the banks of the Dee is resolutely affluent and upper middle-class — a long way from the more economically deprived areas stereotypically associated with ethnic tension. Market Street, Hoylake’s main road running between the equally desirable Meols and West Kirby, is replete with wine bars, micro pubs, and high-end eateries. Even its Wetherspoons, with its flower boxes, glass façade, hanging baskets and twin top-fixed lanterns feels upmarket.

But turn down the King’s Gap – thus named, supposedly, as the launching pad for William of Orange’s 10,000-strong army to Ireland in 1690 – after 5pm and you’ll find a very different scene. On one side of the road down towards the Green Lodge pub are amassed a convocation of apparent patriots waving England flags or wearing Union Jack emblems; on the pavement facing them are activists bearing placards with anti-racist or pro-migrant messages.

Behind the latter crowd is the King’s Gap Hotel. Once a Holiday Inn, the venue was repurposed in 2020 by the Home Office to house migrants while their asylum applications are processed. For the past four years, the guests have been mostly families, seeking ‘leave to remain’ status.

But it’s not solely the King’s Gap status as a “migrant hotel” which concerns protestors — or those gathered to counter them. It’s the type of migrants they care about. Last Monday, a social media post claimed that the present families will soon be moved out. The hotel will then mostly house single males. The relocations, the Facebook communication claimed, would begin by the end of July — last Thursday.