Residents of a town where one in every ten hotel-housed asylum seekers can be found say that Labour’s reforms are “too little, too late”. Uxbridge, in Hillingdon, houses several thousand asylum seekers who arrive at nearby Heathrow Airport, for which the local council has a legal responsibility to provide accommodation.

Speaking to the Express, locals said that immigration had “gotten out of hand”, saying that they had “no idea who they are, where they have come from, how old they are, or what criminal background they have.”

The local council recently announced that it was expecting to spend in excess of £ 10 million a year on housing asylum seekers, which was impacting its spending on other services.

Tensions in the area have only risen, following a knife attack carried out by an Afghan migrant, which left local man, Wayne Broadhurst, dead and two others hospitalised with injuries. Now, following the Home Office’s announcement of reforms to the asylum system, locals in the town are split on whether the proposed changes will be enough.

Susan Weston said that there was a “growing concern that all these people coming over are actually, homeless, paperless […] but they are all of warmongering age.”

She added: “It is going to cause this country an awful lot of problems. I do not think it is enough, and I don’t see what any government can do to stop the tide that is happening.”

Ms Weston, 66, took aim at the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, saing “What is [he] doing as Prime Minister, has he got any idea? I don’t think he has.”

Another local woman, who did not give her name, said that Labour was denying people a “basic human right”, and said she felt the government was “chasing Reform” and in doing so “chasing away voters who believe in basic human rights.”

After the announcement of the changes, , Richard Tice, Reform UK’s deputy leader, sarcastically suggested that Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, was “putting in an application” to join the party.

Ms Weston did not comment on who she felt could get on top of the immigration concerns, instead saying she hoped she was dead by the nection election, saying: “I don’t want to see what’s going on.”

She added: “I don’t recognise this country, this country is not as it used to be. The British are getting pushed out.”

James Savage, a resident of 11 years, said the move proposed by the Home Secretary, was “useless unless we leave the ECHR” adding that “nothing is going to work whilst we don’t have control of the borders”.

Julia Beigos, who works for a service providing support to recently released prisoners struggling with substance abuse, said that many of the asylum seekers “already don’t have access to benefits” as they do not have a recourse to public funds.

She added that prisoners, who had been asylum seekers, were often released homeless, which she said made things “more difficult for them”. Ms Beigos said that the government was not doing enough to help make it easier for people to enter the country legally.

When announcing the plans this week, Ms Mahmood said that the migration crisis was “out of control and unfair”.

She went on to reveal sweeping changes to how refugee status is granted, moving it to temporary, ending the guarantees of housing for asylum seekers, and bringing in new “safe and legal routes” to the country.

Ms Mahmood described the plans as a “sweeping” reform, and said that they were “commensurate to the scale of the challenge we face”. She hit out at “economic migrants seeking to take advantage of the asylum system”.

The changes have caused widespread discontent in the Labour Party, with backbenchers describing the scheme as “dystopian”. So far around twenty backbenchers have voiced their concerns with the plans, either online or in the media.

Critics of the Home Secretary have pointed out that, when in opposition, Ms Mahmood supported a complete amnesty for all undocumented workers in Britain.