Welcome to Waste Watch with Dia Chakravarty.

According to the annual report of the Ministry of the Interior for 2022-2023housing migrants in hotels during this period had cost British taxpayers £8 million a day. “(Our) asylum system and accommodation services,” the report continues, “cost more than £3 billion a year.”

Launching a scathing attack on the Conservatives’ record, the then shadow secretary of state, Yvette Cooper, declared that “Labor has a serious plan to end the government’s wasteful spending on hotels and sack the people who have no right to be here.”

His party promised in a manifesto to end this practice.

Four months after Ms Cooper took control of the Home Office, her department received ‘ministerial approval’ to move asylum seekers to hotel in Greater Manchester town which had just elected its very first Labor MP in July.

It was Halloween week when the leader of Trafford Council’s group of eight Conservative members received a phone call from a friend. What was going on at the Best Western Cresta Court Hotel in Altrincham, the friend asked.

The respectable hotel that would host general meetings and formal dinners appeared to be canceling all reservations – including weddings – for the coming year.

“I discovered by chance,” councilor Nathan Evans told me, that almost 300 asylum seekers – apparently all young men – were to be accommodated at the hotel which usually charges £171 for a family room per night , according to his report. Tripadvisor review.

It was only then that the residents discovered that, without consulting them, the Ministry of the Interior had taken the decision to place 296 people in the town, which their council had accepted without warning the population. local. The Cresta Court Hotel has been closed for 12 months with immediate effect to accommodate asylum seekers.

Altrincham, in all its boundary change iterations, has always been a Conservative constituency. But that changed at the last general election when former voters of Sir Graham Brady (or Lord Brady as he is today) elected their first ever Labor MP in July.

Surprisingly, newly elected MP Conor Rand insisted he “became aware of this arrangement just before the residents and after the signing of the agreement”which would mean there was no engagement at a local level before the decision was made at Westminster.

People have been “apoplectic”, as Councilor Evans put it, saying it was up to his small group of Conservative councilors to respond to “hundreds of emails” and voice their concerns about safeguarding. The hotel is within walking distance of a primary school and a girls’ school, while two other girls’ schools are also nearby.

Questions regarding the control of the hotel’s young male residents were met with a vague response from the local MP.

“The Home Office has assured me that asylum seekers at Cresta Court have been subject to background checks and no problems have been found.”

But how long has the Home Office had to carry out these background checks? It is not uncommon for individuals entering the country illegally to destroy all their identity documents. Were all people placed at the Hotel able to provide the relevant documents?

Residents have no answers because no Interior Ministry representative has been made available to answer these questions.

At a town hall meeting last week – an extract which has now gone viral on social networks – Disbelieving local residents have discovered their new neighbors at the Cresta Court Hotel will have access to private healthcare at taxpayers’ expense.

This would be a bitter pill to swallow for most communities across the country, as difficulty accessing NHS services is probably the one experience all British subjects have in common these days, but for the people of Altrincham, this is inexcusable.

Oliver Carrol, the Conservative parliamentary candidate whom Labor’s Mr Rand beat in July, explains why.

“Altrincham residents are outraged that Labor recently decided to close Altrincham Hospital’s walk-in center – built at a cost of millions of dollars in 2015 – solely to pay for private healthcare for migrants staying in the city’s only large hotel. He is as excoriated as he is debauched.

The aim of healthcare devolution to the Greater Manchester Combined Authority was to empower local communities by bringing decision-making closer to home.

The closure of the walk-in center in the face of fierce opposition from Altrincham residents has instead left them feeling disenfranchised.

As for Westminster’s underhanded conduct in housing 300 unvetted young men who may or may not have a genuine asylum claim in a community without obtaining consent: it sets a dark precedent and casts a long shadow.

Please share examples of government spending in your personal and professional life that you consider a waste of taxpayer dollars. You can email us your stories – in writing or as voice notes – to [email protected]