A homeless camp which was dismantled after blighting one of Britain’s most exclusive addresses for seven years has reopened – just 400 yards down the road, MailOnline can reveal.
Around 30 people – mainly eastern European migrants – are believed to have set up home in the new tent city in London’s Park Lane just weeks after enforcement action was taken to shut down the Mayfair shanty town.
Critics accused officials – over-seeing multi-million pounds of taxpayers money to tackle homelessness – of being ‘shockingly incompetent’.
It comes just days after dozens of mainly homeless migrants in Manchester were finally evicted from a city centre camp set up a year ago – only to erect a new tent city just 150 yards away.
Fed-up residents and business owners say the system has failed when authorities are forced to go to the courts before evictions can take place leading to costs and delays – only for tent dwellers to set up new camps nearby.
The encampments are among a growing number of squalid makeshift settlements springing up across the UK and Ireland in the wake of a growing immigration and housing crisis.
Many of them are in busy city centres and tourist areas – including Birmingham, Bournemouth and Dublin – and are home to largely male populations including a number of former refugees who have settled status but have been unable to find long-term housing.
Others are believed to have travelled to the UK to join begging gangs exploited by organised criminal groups who force them to hand over their takings.
A homeless camp which was dismantled after blighting one of Britain’s most exclusive addresses for seven years has reopened – just 400 yards down the road
Sudanese resident Hassan, 44, (pictured) said: ‘We don’t have money or anywhere to live that’s why we came here – this is for homeless people’
An encampment of 11 tents on a small grass island opposite the Park Lane Hilton was discovered by MailOnline
The encampments are among a growing number of squalid makeshift settlements springing up across the UK and Ireland
Campaigners have now called for the authorities to put an end to their ‘whack-a-mole’ approach to the crisis before it escalates out of control.
William Yarwood, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: ‘Eviction notices can take councils weeks if not months to obtain, costing thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money. Then they move in and break up these homeless camps only for them to pop up again almost immediately just yards down the road.
‘Taxpayers are sick of the incompetence of their officials. Leaving tent encampments to grow and grow disrupts city centres and creates crime. Both of which are ruining the daily lives of ordinary Brits.
‘Local officials need to get a handle of this before the problem gets worse.’
In London, we discovered an encampment of 11 tents on a small grass island opposite the Park Lane Hilton where rooms are available from £342 while guests pay more than £4,000 for a night’s stay in the swanky 27th floor Presidential Suite.
Camp residents take their lives in their hands dashing across three lanes of traffic on each side to reach their temporary homes which sit on top of an underground car park.
On one side of the island are four small tents which are home to a group of men from Sudan. After nights of heavy rain soggy bedding had been hung out to dry on nearby railings while cooking utensils sit on top of a ventilator shaft along with tins of food.
Around 30 people – mainly eastern European migrants – are believed to have set up home in the new tent city in London’s Park Lane
The new tent city in Park Lane was set up just weeks after enforcement action was taken to shut down the nearby Mayfair shanty town
The other side of the island is home to a group of Romanians who have six tents. Four of them are protected by a makeshift roof made up of tarpaulin and planks of wood.
There are a number of M&S shopping trolleys scattered around their area along with M&S paper shopping bags emblazoned with Union Flags used to store belongings.
There are no bathroom facilities and we found evidence of drug paraphernalia and beer cans littering hedges – while piles of rubbish have been left scattered around near to the entrance to the hotel.
One Sudanese resident called Hassan told how he had been in the UK for 20 years but became homeless two years ago.
Hassan, 44, said: ‘We don’t have money or anywhere to live that’s why we came here – this is for homeless people.
‘We come to this camp because nobody troubles us. The police never come. No one comes to tell us to go.
‘The only people who come are from the charities to check that we are OK. We get help from different charities – places where you can get food and a shower.’
Hassan – who previously worked as a mechanic and delivery driver – said: ‘I have lived in different houses, shared houses. I have been around here, around Victoria, sometimes I am in the hostel.
‘I am not on my own. There are other people from my country here who are my friends. Some of them were in the other camp before it was closed down.
‘Sometimes you come across people who live in the tents who are different people and you don’t always think the same way but we look out for each other and help each other.
Residents are protected by a makeshift roof made up of tarpaulin and planks of wood
‘We look out for each other and help each other,’ resident Hassan said
‘It is very cold – too cold to sleep. It has rained too much but once the weather is better there will be more,’ one resident said
‘I have been here since January, just a few weeks. I would like a home to live in but this tent now is all I have.’
Another resident of the camp said: ‘There will be more people coming.
‘It is very cold – too cold to sleep. It has rained too much but once the weather is better there will be more.
‘There are other places you can stay but you get moved on from outside shops and in doorways. You can’t go to the park because that is locked and they move you on.
‘Here we feel safe and nobody comes to tell us to move.’
Transport for London (TfL) which manages the strips of land in the middle of Park Lane took legal action last year to clear the site where locals said the camp was first set up more than seven years ago.
In July 2024, Central London County Court granted the transport authority a possession order and in October mask-wearing officers moved in to dismantle the camp which held as many as 20 tents and 40 people.
But the tent dwellers were left to wheel their possessions off in their shopping trolleys – and it was not long before they returned.
The City of Westminster Conservative Group has now launched a petition calling on Labour-run Westminster Council to tackle the growing problem of tent encampments
One local business owner said: ‘Some of the people there are professional beggars. They go out in the morning all carrying signs saying the same things like they’ve been presented to them as a script’
There are no bathroom facilities and MailOnline found evidence of drug paraphernalia and beer cans littering hedges
One local business owner, who asked not to be named, told MailOnline: ‘This has been going on for years. Every time a camp is cleared another appears – it’s never ending.
‘Some of the people there are professional beggars. They go out in the morning all carrying signs saying the same things like they’ve been presented to them as a script. There has also been anti-social behaviour.
‘It’s not a suitable place to live – it’s in the middle of a busy road. There are no toilets – the people there use the bushes. This can’t go on.’
The City of Westminster Conservative Group has now launched a petition calling on Labour-run Westminster Council to tackle the growing problem of tent encampments.
They are calling for ‘swift action alongside suitable support for the homeless’.
As well as Park Lane, further camps have sprung up including on a section of land beneath the Westway elevated dual carriageway which has been described as being ‘like a third world disaster zone’.
The land there is also managed by TfL.
Paul Swaddle, Westminster’s Conservative group leader, said: ‘The process to remove tents from land is to apply for a possession order.
‘This is something that should have been done nine months ago.
‘After 10 months, the council and TfL have only just applied for the order and so it will be another two months before they can claim back the land and remove the tents – which is shockingly incompetent.’
Rsidents of ‘tent city’, an encampment in Mayfair, were forced to leave in October after the council cleared them out
Residents left the site with their possessions packed in bulging bags and suitcases
Meanwhile, in Manchester homeless migrants evicted from their camp next to the town hall in St Peter’s Square told of their incredulity that they were simply allowed to set up a new home just yards away.
It came after Manchester City Council finally secured a ‘possession order’ against those living in a sea of red tents for more than a year.
Occupants – mainly African men who had arrived in the UK on small boats – were handed plastic bags and told to leave the area on Wednesday morning but instead of dispersing as the authorities had hoped, most simply acquired new tents and created a new shanty village outside the Midland Hotel.
Hisham Fitir, 35, who said he came to the UK to flee fighting in his native Sudan, told Mailonline: ‘They must have spent a lot of time and money to move us – and we just came here.
‘It’s crazy that we have just moved from the square to this hotel. It seems like you have a mad justice and immigration system in this country.’
Omar Osman, 47, who said he had fled war-torn Eritrea, said: ‘The immigration system here seems so crazy and confusing.
‘It’s a joke we have been moved from the square to another tent camp. It seems madness.’
Former businessman Mr Osman, said of his circumstances: ‘I have been in this country for seven years so I know how the system in your country works.
Manchester City Council finally secured a ‘possession order’ against those living in a sea of red tents for more than a year
However, homeless migrants told of their incredulity that they were allowed to simply set up a new camp in Manchester city centre hours after being finally evicted
Authorities evicted people from the ‘red-tent camp’ in St Peter’s Square, Manchester, earlier this week
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EXCLUSIVE Inside Manchester’s new migrant camp set up just yards away from dismantled tent city
‘I knew that we would be moved on so I got out of the camp a few days ago.
‘I was in Italy but came to this country and I was put in a place in OIdham.
‘But after a few years I was moved. I was in Blackburn last year but I was kicked out so ended up in Manchester.
‘The council have said we are not from Manchester so we cannot get housing.
‘They have told us to rent a house. But I want to be put up in a hotel so I can sort myself out.’
The evictions took place after a legal challenge to oppose the evictions by the Greater Manchester Law Centre was turned down by a judge.
Ruling in the councils’ favour Judge Nigel Bird said the occupants – considered trespassers in law – must remove their tents.
He said: ‘St Peter’s Square is a public amenity. It stands at the heart of the city and its amenity in my judgment is available for all.’
The council said after winning the ruling: ‘We have been clear with those camping in the square that this is not a safe, suitable or sanitary place from which to access this support.
‘Nor does camping in a public space accelerate their homelessness application or gain them any other advantage.
A sprawling encampment of tents sprung up in central Dublin last May close to government buildings
The occupants were men, mainly from Nigeria, who descended on Ireland’s International Protection Offices after officials began offering homes only to asylum seeker families not single individuals
Other cities across Britain have been blighted with makeshift encampments including Birmingham where rough sleepers set up home on a busy roundabout.
And the local council in Bournemouth was forced to serve eviction notices to remove tents from the beach and under the pier.
Last year the crisis spilled across the border into Ireland as asylum seekers flooded into the country to avoid deportation under the former Conservative government’s Rwanda plan.
A sprawling encampment of tents sprung up in central Dublin last May close to government buildings.
The occupants were men, mainly from Nigeria, who descended on Ireland’s International Protection Offices after officials began offering homes only to asylum seeker families not single individuals amid a housing shortage.
Irish police joined officials to clear a shanty town of more than 200 migrants but within days more than 100 tents were erected nearby along the city’s Grand Canal.
Over a number of weeks officials were forced to remove encampments at least five times as occupants moved around from one site to another.