Chagos deal islanders sent to live in city flats

London council arranged short-term accommodation as officials scotch 'spurious' claims about asylum seekers

- Sentinel Reporter

A LONDON council is housing 'homeless households' in a Stoke-on-Trent flats complex.

The 21 families have been granted UK citizenship and flown around 6,000 miles to London in a deal linked to the decades-old Chagos Islands dispute.

They touched down at Heathrow Airport before Hillingdon Council placed them in Caledonia Mills, Shelton. The move was made with 'no formal prior notification' with Stoke-on-Trent City Council.

It has sparked claims from neighbours that asylum seekers had been placed in Caledonia Mills. But a Sentinel investigation has found that is not the case.

The Chagos Islands is in the Indian Ocean about 300 miles from Mauritius. The UK declared the Chagos Islands an overseas territory in 1965 and later allowed the US to build a naval base there. It sparked a sovereignty dispute with Mauritius and the UK government has agreed to transfer the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, sparking an influx of Chagossians into the UK.