"In their letter to the Home Office, lawyers for the FBU cited media reports which said the Bibby Stockholm had only 222 single-occupancy rooms, but that additional beds had been placed in each in order to to increase the capacity to 506.
"Other reports said that, while the barge had three fire exits, one was not operational because it was at the end of a gangway that had been deemed too steep to be safely used.
“A whistleblower in the local authority is also quoted as telling the Times that fire checks in July had led to serious safety concerns and describing the barge as having the potential to become a “floating Grenfell”.”
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Government plans to accommodate asylum seekers on a barge on England’s south coast face a possible legal challenge over fire safety.
The Bibby Stockholm is a three-story barge, currently berthed in Portland Port, Dorset, which is intended to hold around 500 men while they await the outcome of their asylum applications.
In their letter to the Home Office, lawyers for the FBU cited media reports which said the Bibby Stockholm had only 222 single-occupancy rooms, but that additional beds had been placed in each in order to to increase the capacity to 506.
A whistleblower in the local authority is also quoted as telling the Times that fire checks in July had led to serious safety concerns and describing the barge as having the potential to become a “floating Grenfell”.
The barge has already faced a number of legal challenges, including from refugee charities representing individual migrants and over whether the government has secured the appropriate planning permissions.
The latest challenge comes as the Home Office considers plans to fit people arriving illegally in the UK with GPS tags as an alternative to detaining them because of a lack of space in the immigration detention estate, according to the Times.
The original article contains 671 words, the summary contains 200 words. Saved 70%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!