Controversial red doors on asylum seekers’ homes repainted
The first Middlesbrough asylum seekers’ homes with controversial red doors have had their entrances repainted, the services giant with the contract to house them has said.
Doors on the properties in the Gresham area will be repainted a variety of colours so that they will not be so easily identifiable as housing asylum seekers.
The issue blew up last week when The Times revealed that asylum seekers were housed in properties with red doors that made them a target for racists and vandals.
Peter Neden and John Whitwam of G4S and Stuart Monk, of local sub-contractor Jomast, will appear before the Commons Home Affairs committee today to discuss the controversy.
The repainting process began on Monday, G4S said.
A number of doors have been given a grey undercoat. And painters have started applying a purple top coat to at least one home.
A spokesman said: “I am reluctant to confirm exactly what colours they are repainting them in.
“They are not our properties, they belong to Jomast, and they are conducting the repainting.
“They have confirmed to us that the red doors will be repainted in a range of different colours, and not one predominant colour.”
The spokesman said G4S challenged the assertion that Jomast properties occupied by asylum seekers all had red doors, saying it was “only a proportion”.
Immigration specialist Professor Thom Brooks said the solution in Middlesbrough was not merely painting doors, and the town needed extra funding to deal with having more than the official 1:200 guideline ratio of asylum seekers to residents.
The Durham University professor of law and government, himself a migrant from the US, said: “They have still left Middlesbrough as the number one place in the country for dispersal of asylum seekers.
“I have seen nothing to say that there will be extra funding for the community to account for that.
“It’s not a case of saying those people they already have should be moved – they have already been through enough turmoil in their lives – but there should be extra money to manage the impact.
“What are the repercussions for bot following the Home Office guidelines?”
Copyright (c) Press Association Ltd. 2016, All Rights Reserved. Picture (c) Tom Wilkinson / PA Wire.
