Plan for homes near hotel closed to house asylum seekers near Earley
The Best Western Moat House Hotel in Mill Lane, Sindlesham, has been closed since 2020
Plans could see homes built near a hotel that has been closed to house asylum seekers on the outskirts of Reading.
The Best Western Moat House Hotel in Mill Lane, Sindlesham, has been closed since 2020 and used to house asylum seekers.
New homes could be created nearby, as land to the south has been suggested for development in a ‘call for sites’ as part of Wokingham Borough Council’s Local Plan process.
A site off Mill Lane, between the Moat House and the River Loddon, has been suggested for six homes and a storage container.
The site is currently grassland located north of a single-file bridge over the Loddon.
South of the river, a land promoter has proposed a plan for up to nine homes, with Avenue House being converted into specialist housing.
These new homes would be located just minutes away from the hotel, where Iranian asylum seeker Amin Abedi Mofrad was staying during his trial for raping a 15-year-old girl in Oxford.
The offence took place near the Westgate shopping centre on February 14, 2024, while Mofrad was staying at the Holiday Inn Express near the Kassam football stadium.
He was subsequently moved to the Moat House, which became the target of self-appointed investigators known as ‘auditors’.
According to data from the Home Office, there are 100 asylum seekers in hotels in Wokingham Borough, and 22 are in dispersal accommodation within the community, with a grand total of 125 asylum seekers living in the borough.
That is down from the 250 living in asylum seeker hotels alone in June last year.
The government has committed to ending the use of hotels as asylum seeker accommodation by the end of this Parliament, expected in 2029, meaning the Moat House may no longer be used for that purpose by the time any development identified through the Local Plan 2045 process takes place.
However, a planning application for either site could be submitted before the new Local Plan is adopted.
Yuan Yang, the Labour MP for Earley and Woodley, described the long-term use of hotels for asylum seekers as “untenable” during a question-and-answer session in Parliament last year.
Sir Alan Campbell MP, the Leader of the Commons, replied: “We inherited a broken system.
“We are working as fast as we can to close all asylum hotels as quickly as is practical. We have already halved the number already open.”
Proposals for housing have appeared as sites for development in the council’s Local Plan 2045, which is set to be discussed by councillors in the coming years.
You can view these sites on an interactive map published on the council website.
The proposal for six homes has been designated site reference 6EA103, and the proposal for the nine homes and conversion of Avenue House is designated site reference 6WI104.
A scoping consultation on the suggested sites is live on the Engage Wokingham consultation website.
This will be open for comments until 11:59pm on Monday, November 16.