Palestinian family-of-seven booted from Metropole day after raising concerns over condition of hotel

The Blackpool Lead can exclusively reveal that the family were moved 24 hours after speaking with ITV - leaving their eldest daughter's nurse training in disarray

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If you are a viewer of ITV News, you may have seen their package this week on the conditions at the Metropole Hotel. If you’re a reader of The Blackpool Lead too, you’d have recognised the imagery from our report in July.

The piece was really well done but it has had real consequences for the mother and father who spoke to them - now shipped off to Telford with what was essentially zero notice.

Serco says the family were moved due to concerns over behaviour - but that doesn’t account for a daughter studying to convert her nursing qualification to British standard who has been given an enormous setback. Nor does it account for why the family were only served with warnings about their behaviour immediately after doing the interview, despite being there for months.

Here is a family doing what critics of the asylum process want to see. They were fleeing genuine conflict, they tried other countries first, they want to contribute to British life.

Today we tell the story of what has happened to them - and it appears that it’s happened because they dared to speak up.

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Palestinian family-of-seven booted from Metropole day after raising concerns over condition of hotel

The Metropole in Blackpool. Credit: The Blackpool Lead

By Luke Beardsworth

A family of refugees from Palestine were thrown out of the Metropole with two hours’ notice the day after they spoke to journalists about the conditions in the hotel, The Blackpool Lead can reveal.

The mother and father of a family-of-seven from Palestine, who arrived in Blackpool earlier this year, spoke with ITV News to raise concerns about the conditions within the Metropole, which has been used to house asylum seekers since 2021.

The conditions at the hotel, owned by maligned chain Britannia Hotels, have been under scrutiny since The Blackpool Lead reported on concerns from a member of staff in July which said that those in the hotel are being ‘destroyed’ by the conditions they face.

Issues at the hotel included ceilings falling in, mould and the potential that raw sewage was entering the building from the basement during winter.

The family, from Palestine, believe they are being punished for speaking to the media. Serco denied this and said the family was moved after concerns over their behaviour.

But The Blackpool Lead has seen evidence that concerns over behaviour, which allegedly included the man ‘pushing’ a member of cleaning staff out of his room, were not raised until 24 October - the day after the ITV interview.

And it was on the same day that two warnings were issued that the family was put in taxis and moved instead to the Madeley Court Hotel in Telford.

This was particularly disruptive to the eldest daughter in the family who was studying at college to convert her nursing qualification to British standards as part of her efforts to adapt to British life.

Instead, she is now attempting to study remotely in Telford in accommodation that does not come with the Internet.