Banbury hotel taken over for orphaned children, claims owner - and the public are being urged to help them

The hotel’s owner, Ravi Ruparelia, said today that the asylum seekers being housed at the 69-bedroomed hotel are young refugees aged between four and 17-years-old. And he appealed to the Banbury area public for clothing and other necessities to help give the children what they need.

Mr Ruparelia told the Banbury Guardian he and Countrywide Hotels have secured a loan, in the region of £100,000 in order to make redundancy payments to staff who might otherwise have had to wait a long time for claims to be processed through the Government system. He said they should all receive their money by this evening (Tuesday).

"The management and directors have been working tirelessly to assist the staff with their wages and redundancy payments and have been in communication throughout, contrary to the current narrative.

“The normal route for redundancy claims in this situation would be to go through the redundancy service.”

Responding to reports about use of the hotel under contract from the Home Office for asylum seekers, Mr Ruparelia said that the hotel, along with many others across the country, had been struggling financially since the Covid pandemic and that the business was insolvent at the time the request to take asylum seekers was made.

He said: "The hotel has been non-profitable for a number of years after losing a major contract during the Covid-19 pandemic. We spent millions on refurbishment of the asset during the pandemic with a brand-new restaurant, bar and new bedrooms.

"We hope in the future the locals will provide the same support to the hotel as they have done for the staff in these past few days.”

Staff had complained that they were not getting any redundancy payments and protested outside the hotel last week.

But now, the management have said that they will get their wages and redundancy payments after all.

“We have taken out a loan so the staff get their redundancy, holiday and notice pay monies as soon as possible. In any normal scenario this would be a month after,” said Mr Ruparelia.

“This is at huge personal expense (circa £100k) and contrary to the narrative this would not come from the tax payer as we are giving this money to the staff with no condition to pay it back. This would mean they should not apply to the redundancy service as they would then get paid twice,” he said.

“The current users of the hotel are young orphans between the ages of four-17. We ask the public of Banbury to please respect these children who have lost their families in a foreign war. We are doing a service here in looking after them and we as a town should be protecting them.

“If members of the community can provide assistance with and clothing and toys it would be greatly appreciated and can be left at the front door.”

Mr Ruparelia said the management team had stepped in to help with a bulk buy of clothes for the children on the day they arrived.