Channel migrants: 116 children missing from UK hotels

Bangla sanglap desk: More than 100 unaccompanied child migrants remain missing after disappearing from UK hotels over a 14-month period, data reveals.

BBC News has discovered that 116 children disappeared between July 2021 and August 2022, after temporarily being put in hotels by the Home Office.

Charities fear the children, some as young as 11, risk being exploited.

The Home Office said it had “no alternative” but to use hotels while long-term accommodation was found.

The government has been placing children who arrive in the UK in approved hotels since July last year, after local councils said there was not enough capacity to house them in suitable accommodation.

Some 1,606 children who arrived alone between July 2021 and June 2022 were placed in hotel accommodation by the Home Office, according to its own figures.

BBC Two’s Newsnight discovered that 181 children – aged 18 or less – subsequently went missing in the 14-month period covered by the data, which was released by the Home Office following Freedom of Information requests. But 65 were later found.