EXCLUSIVE: Locals in the shadow of a huge migrant hotel in Wembley, London, warn that the NHS is “deteriorating fast” as the suburb’s population explodes.
The 63-year-old goes to India for medical check-ups. (Image: Jonathan Buckmaster)
A business owner operating in the shadow of a huge hotel housing asylum seekers has revealed that locals are travelling abroad for operations, while migrants have access to healthcare at their doorstep through NHS vans that visit their accommodation.
Mala Pawar, a British citizen with family in India, says she has no choice but to travel abroad for medical treatment, blaming a lack of Government action and the growing population of the northwest London suburb of Wembley. She said she has given up her reliance on the NHS for annual check-ups because of the weeks-long waiting times and instead travels back to Asia for doctor appointments. Ms Pawar runs the Abaci Collection, a clothing shop dwarfed by both Wembley Stadium and a 400-room Holiday Inn currently being used by the Home Office to house asylum seekers
“The NHS services are deteriorating fast,” she told the Express. “I don’t blame the staff, I blame the Government and the number of people who are increasing by the day.”
“If I have a pressing injury, I’ll try to book an appointment here, but it’s always a very long wait,” the 63-year-old added. “It’ll be weeks before someone sees me.” The shop owner said she thinks people in the area are seeking treatment abroad on an increasingly regular basis, with a colleague who was born and bred in England recently planning a holiday around seeking medical advice overseas.
The Holiday Inn is one of over 200 migrant hotels across the UK. (Image: Jonathan Buckmaster)
Asylum seekers wait for healthcare from an NHS van outside a hotel in Wembley. (Image: Jeremy Selwyn)
“Her husband had chest pain issues and breathlessness, and it’s taken the NHS a very long time to give him any kind of diagnosis,” she said. “So she got everything done out there instead.”
The Holiday Inn in Wembley is one of over 200 hotels in the UK currently being used to house asylum seekers as they wait for their applications to be processed.
The Government has pledged to end the use of asylum hotels by 2029, but costs have already rocketed to three times the estimated spending of the previous Tory Government in 2019. A report from the National Audit Office puts the total 10-year sum up to 2029 at over £15 billion.
As conflicts continue to rage across the globe, asylum applications to the UK are on the rise. A record 108,138 people claimed asylum in the UK last year, an 18% increase from 2023.
While staff at businesses near Wembley’s Holiday Inn, directly in the shadow of the famous stadium, say its occupants are generally well-behaved, the continued funding of the facility, even as waiting lists tick up, can be difficult to stomach.
Asylum seekers based at the hotel are also entitled to primary and secondary care free of charge, and an NHS outreach service has also been spotted outside, providing early detection and treatment of diseases including tuberculosis and blood-borne viruses.
Hilmi Avci, who lives at the hotel, said he has a GP and a hip operation scheduled. (Image: Jonathan Buckmaster)
Hilmi Avci, a Turkish-Kurdish asylum seeker who has lived at the hotel for six months, said: “I have a GP here and a hip operation scheduled. I think we get pretty good treatment here.”
Another Ethiopian migrant said he was en route to a GP appointment at a surgery five minutes down the road and also had a chest inspection from a Find and Treat outreach van that visited the hotel last week.
But a local shopkeeper who wanted to remain anonymous added that the delay in asylum application processing was not a positive thing for anyone in the borough, including the handful of “restless” migrants engaging in antisocial behaviour such as verbal abuse.
“Many of them are perfectly nice, but I think there’s a struggle to adapt to the new community,” they said. “They’re sitting there all day doing nothing, just waiting for the applications to be processed. Of course, they’re going to get restless – being in that hotel all day is their only job.”
The Labour Government has promised to turn around the ailing NHS through a 10-year health plan, which includes increasing the use of the NHS app and a GP recruitment drive.
A spokesperson for the London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust said: “We can confirm that all referrals to our services are triaged by clinical teams and prioritised in order of clinical need and length of time on our waiting list.
“Immigration or asylum status is not a factor in how quickly someone is seen by our services.”
The Home Office and NHS England have been contacted for comment.
