Lewisham Council to Ban Cooperation with Home Office on Immigration Raids

Lewisham’s Green-led borough council will vote on 22 July 2026 to end any collaboration with the Home Office on immigration enforcement. The motion, backed by the Greens’ 40 of the council’s 54 seats, calls for a review of spending and data-collection systems to prevent the sharing of local information with immigration officials. Council officials uncovered a 2023 email from the Home Office’s immigration enforcement team requesting “joint operational visits” with the council’s food-standards department, prompting the proposed ban.

The Guardian

Lewisham was designated a “sanctuary borough” in May 2021 under a Labour administration, pledging to welcome migrants, asylum seekers and refugees. Since the Labour government took power in 2024, the Home Office reports a 77 % rise in raids on businesses such as nail bars, car washes, barbers and takeaways, with an 83 % increase in arrests. The same 2023 email shows the department seeking local health data to target restaurant workers, echoing earlier findings that child-protection services in Sussex had shared information on unaccompanied asylum-seeking children with immigration enforcement.

The Guardian

Green party leader Zack Polanski framed the motion as a moral stand, emphasizing the creation of a “corridor of sanctuary” across London. A Home Office spokesperson defended the existing partnership, describing immigration visits as “intelligence-led” and asserting no apology for “joining forces with local authorities to enable information sharing and ultimately fighting criminals who fuel immigration crime.” Peter Walsh, senior researcher at the Migration Observatory, noted that workplace enforcement may deter illegal hiring but cautioned that raids “can only ever touch a small share of the businesses involved” and are “expensive, resource-intensive and reliant on tipoffs of variable quality.”

The Guardian

Labour’s immigration policy has drawn pressure from voters and Reform UK to adopt a tougher stance, leading to the historic surge in raids. Critics argue that the effectiveness of such operations remains mixed, questioning whether the resource-heavy approach yields proportional public-security benefits.

The Guardian

• “I’m proud of brave, compassionate Green councils in London working to create a corridor of sanctuary where nobody, no matter where they’re from or what papers they have, has to live in fear of being snatched away from the place they call home.” — Zack Polanski, Green party leader

The Guardian

• “While all immigration enforcement visits are intelligence-led, we make no apology for joining forces with local authorities to enable information sharing and ultimately fighting criminals who fuel immigration crime.” — Home Office spokesperson

The Guardian

• “Peter Walsh, a senior researcher at the Migration Observatory, said: “There is evidence that workplace enforcement makes employers think twice about hiring people without the right to work.” — Peter Walsh, senior researcher, Migration Observatory

The Guardian

• “I am trying to establish some contacts within the council of whom we as a team can share findings with that may be of interest to the Local Authorities,” — Home Office immigration enforcement official, email (2023)

The Guardian