Asylum seeker living in 'newly built £300,000 townhouse' speaks for the first time on adapting to life in the UK
LBC has spoken exclusively with one asylum seeker living in a newly built three-bedroom terraced house, which prompted fury online from Elon Musk.
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A sleepy Suffolk village with barely 500 residents has been at the centre of a political storm after it was revealed that four, brand new townhouses were being used to house asylum seekers.
Two of the four properties, worth up to £300,000 each, are already being used to accommodate two families seeking asylum.
One of the asylum seekers living there tells me that she only moved into the house three weeks ago and has been adapting to life in the countryside.
The lady in her 50s, referred to as ‘K’, is currently seeking asylum in the UK after coming over from Sri Lanka.
She tells me that she is “happy” to be living in England and when asked how locals have been with her family she replies “yes friendly”.
K also told me she wasn’t aware of any publicity regarding her accommodation online.
Aside from an issue with refuse workers missing their houses for bin collections (as they live on a new, purpose built road parallel with the railway line), she says that she has been enjoying walking around the local area.
As we speak at the top of her road, she is looking after 5 children, two of them are hers and three others are from another family they are living with.
After a few minutes of speaking (and trying to track down the bin lorry) she nervously waits for a local charity worker who gives her a hug and a carrier bag of what appeared to be tins and glass jars.
The unnamed village is particularly remote. There is a pub which is not even open every weekday, and the nearest shops (aside from what appears to be a furniture shop) are a drive away.
Despite the house facilities having EV charging points built-in there does not appear to be any cars on the drive.
Some locals are angry at the situation with small boat crossings and the accommodation provided for asylum seekers, but most people are genuinely concerned.
One woman, who has lived locally “for ever” but who did not want to be named, said that the migrants had been put in a “really tough place”.
“How are they going to integrate into the community when there’s no transport around here. There’s no shops in walking distance. I think it’s really tough for them, poor people. It’s really rough”.
Local councillor Harry Richardson said that it was “Really disappointing”.
Cllr Richardson told me “the location where these new properties have been acquired - it is in the middle of nowhere, there aren’t really any transport links”.
The local politician who also leads the Mid Suffolk Conservatives said that the location choice was “baffling”, adding “it does seem as though they are taking these families and sort of dumping them in the middle of nowhere, with no kind of engagement with the local community, which is deeply disappointing”.
In response to reporting of the story, the world’s richest man Elon Musk wrote: ’This must stop now’.
Another resident living nearby called Gary told me that they “haven’t got a problem with them”.
He said “there’s a lot of them here - that are at school with my daughter and son and that, as long as they aren’t the single men I can’t see what the issue is”.
Whilst Lisa, who lives in a nearby town, told me that she blames “14 years of tory austerity”, saying “we should be building social housing, we’ve not done it for years - its the whole political situation that’s caused this, its not asylum seekers”.
