Hopefully the coverage by Spotted and the Crawley Observer has helped to shed a little light on this, but given that I keep being asked about it I thought I’d set out everything in once place I could refer people back to.
The very short version
The council has a statutory obligation to house recently-arrived British citizens of Chagossian heritage, so we are having to house them temporarily in public buildings while trying to find other housing options.
The short version
Two years ago, all those of Chagossian heritage were granted British citizenship in recognition of the UK’s ongoing refusal to allow them to return home. The largest Chagossian community is in Crawley, so this is where most of those exercising their right to move to the UK and access housing support are heading to, including around 80 people on a plane which landed last week. Due to Crawley already having a housing crisis, we have limited options for preventing homelessness, so for now we are having to use public buildings to provide temporary housing. We have been warned that further planes are likely to follow.
The detailed version
Two years ago Henry Smith secured a change in the law so that everyone of Chagossian heritage globally now has the right to British citizenship, with the ability to move to the UK and the same rights to housing support as any other British citizen: https://www.henrysmith.info/…/henry-smith-mp-secures…
The majority of the current Chagossian population in the UK lives in Crawley, so from the moment the legislation was proposed the council has had concerns that it would be required to house up to 20,000 people, roughly a sixth of the town’s current population, something which would completely overload local services. The council has repeatedly called upon Government to anticipate the impact of their change in the law to local services and to put a plan in place to prevent a crisis developing in Crawley: https://crawley.gov.uk/…/council-leader-writes…
The first plane arrived this week with just under 80 people aboard and as Crawley already has one of the worst housing shortages in the country, with around 1.5% of our population living in temporary housing, hostels and hotels, finding somewhere for people to go–as we are legally obliged to do under the Housing Act–will take time and a lot of money we don’t really have. Consequently, while trying to find other housing options we’ve had to put people into K2, the designated location for respite provision in the town’s emergency plans for that number of people.
To be clear, this is likely to be the beginning of the issue and not the end. The numbers which have indicated that they intend to claim British citizenship as a result of Mr Smith’s change to the law coupled with conversations with members of the community mean that we have to be ready for a regular repeat of this over the Summer.
Given the history of the Chagossians, who were forcibly removed from their islands by the British Government and continue to be banned from returning to their home, they are certainly owed a debt by the UK and I do not in any way mean to suggest otherwise.
What is happening here though is decision-makers again failing to deal with the consequences of their decision. The implications of granting so many people citizenship, with full rights to the housing system, where that population has ties to a single town in the UK should have been obvious to all, particularly to our now former MP. Instead of doing anything to prepare they have yet again let down both these new British citizens and the population of Crawley.
Please try to treat these new citizens with the kindness which has been absent for so long in the way they have been dealt with, the blame for what we are now dealing with lies elsewhere.
Peter Lamb for Crawley 
I would just like to ask why I have received a email from K2 to say that they are housing people in the conference room so I am a member and I’m wondering why they’re not using Nutfield as it has been closed and the building is still there
K2 has been designated for respite provision in the town’s emergency plans since it was first opened and that forms part of the contract with Everyone Active in managing the centre. If an incident is on a small scale we use a community centre, a larger scale would be the Hawth and the largest is K2. We can ensure that these facilities are both available to the council and have the relevant supplies to hand because they are council-owned facilities, which is why they have always been used in this way.
Nuffield on the other hand is a privately-owned building that the council has nothing whatsoever to do with (although that didn’t stop people blaming the council for it closing), so its use would be at the discretion of the building’s owner which is a major pensions company without an obvious point of contact for us.
There is another issue with buildings have been shut for a while (because we have considered several other closed public buildings), which is tht they require some time to make safe, for instance undertaking testing for legionnaires disease. This may well be a route we head down though if it proves the only route possible.
Will this affect bowling at K2
No, we have relocated the respite provision.