YORK Outer MP Julian Sturdy says the government should move towards finding alternatives to hotels for housing asylum seekers.

His comments come as anger grows about the disappearance of more than 200 asylum-seeking children from Home Office hotels – many understood to be from the Brighton area.

More than 100 charities and other leading organisations have written to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak describing the situation as a ‘child protection scandal’ and calling for an independent inquiry.

An undisclosed number of asylum seeker families - believed to be more than 400 people in all - are staying in temporary accommodation at a York hotel.

Mr Sturdy said he was not aware that there had been any child protection concerns regarding child asylum seekers in the city.

But he admitted that he DID have concerns about placing asylum seekers in hotels.

“We have not had any reports of this (child asylum seekers going missing) in York – but the government needs to do all it can to make sure that it does not happen,” he said.

He admitted that hotels were ‘not ideal’ as accommodation for asylum seekers – especially women and children.

“We would all like to move away from using hotels for asylum seekers – that would be the ideal solution,” he said. “You would prioritise women and children.

“We will have to be working to find a better solution. The government is moving in that direction.“

The letter to Mr Sunak, which has been signed by charities including ECPAT UK, the Refugee Council, the NSPCC, Barnardo’s, Action for Children, Coram, The Children’s Society and National Children’s Bureau - urges the Prime Minister to end the practice of housing young refugees who have been separated from their families in Home Office hotels, and instead place them with specialist local authority teams who can protect them.

It comes after Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick told MPs in the House of Commons on Tuesday that more than 4,600 unaccompanied children have been accommodated in hotels since July 2021.

He added: “There have been 440 missing occurrences and 200 children remain missing, 13 of whom are under 16 years of age and only one of whom is female.”

He said 88 per cent (176) of the unaccompanied asylum-seeking children still missing are Albanian nationals, with the remaining 12% from Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Vietnam, Pakistan and Turkey.

Rebecca Russell of charity York City of Sanctuary stressed that the asylum seekers staying at a York hotel were all families, and that there were no unaccompanied children.

She said security at the hotel was very good. "They are safe. The hotel is run really well," she said.