Gillingham hotel has to deny rumours they house asylum seekers

KentOnline / KMTV

King Charles hotel says they've also heard plans for a march to end outside, which it described as "both distressing and unnecessary" for the business and its staff.  Meghan Shaw reports.

Transcript

00:00So I'm here at the King Charles Hotel just behind me and earlier today on Facebook they posted a

00:05status where they denied rumours circulating around the hotel that it's been used in their

00:09own words to house people under government schemes. They deny this and say they've never

00:14had plans to do so. They say that they've had a really busy season as of late with the hotel

00:18and we can assume that perhaps people have misinterpreted this extra activity around

00:24the hotel especially that claims like these, this misinformation is quite harmful to the staff.

00:29They're just trying to do their job and as we've seen protesters like these, they're loud, they can

00:34attract huge swathes of people and sometimes these kind of protesters aren't afraid to use civil

00:38disobedience or violence. So it really just put the staff at risk. Early today I spoke with the Shaba Khan

00:44MP for Gillingham and Rainham and she also denied the truth to these rumours. Her office too has been

00:51dealing with debunking these myths. She also took the time early today to speak to me about what could

00:58be done about this kind of misinformation circulating on social media. It's incredibly worrying isn't it

01:03because we've got this most of this misinformation coming through social media and it's quite difficult

01:07to pinpoint exactly where some of it is starting. But I think, I do believe we do need to start

01:14thinking about what action we can take. I mean obviously once we become aware of something like

01:19this that is clearly not based on facts or reality then conversations with the police are necessary.

01:25But really we do need to start looking at the spread of misinformation using social media and I do

01:30urge the public to think quite carefully when they see a post and to just you know look at look at

01:36whether it's real, look at who it's coming from and double check with the right sources before they

01:41decide to take action. The King Charles Hotel has asked people not to share unverified information

01:46as it only causes damage both to businesses, to their staff and the wider community in Chillingham.

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