I’ll tell the British homeless bloke living in a box under the overpass in London that he needs to move his box closer to a hairdresser and somewhere with better WI-Fi, a doctor and a ‘cultural kitchen’, or he can consider himself treated inhumanely. The Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) is taking the piss. Either that or they urgently need psychological help

A migrant detention centre has been branded “inhumane” by a prison watchdog because of its remote location, poor mobile phone signal and slow Wi-Fi.

The Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) also criticised Derwentside immigration removal centre, set in County Durham countryside, because it did not have a hair salon, shop, cultural kitchen and a private GP visits only twice a week.

It said the women-only facility was a long drive from the south east, a journey that could leave illegal migrants “tired, disorientated or stressed”.

The watchdog advised the Home Office to “reconsider its suitability” despite admitting the accommodation is good. Staff at the centre outnumber migrants almost six to one. Last year, there were 97 workers looking after 17 migrants

“We consider that the location of Derwentside, plus the inadequate communications infrastructure, is unsuitable and leads to treatment of detained women that is in some respects inhumane,” said the IMB.

“Added to the difficulty with the physical location is the unreliable mobile phone reception, a problem that we have raised with the contractor and the Home Office from when the centre first opened, and which has not yet been resolved.

Read more: I’ll tell the British homeless bloke living in a box under the overpass in London that he needs to move his box closer to a hairdresser and somewhere with better WI-Fi, a doctor and a ‘cultural kitchen’, or he can consider himself treated inhumanely. The Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) is taking the piss. Either that or they urgently need psychological help