Immigration officers arrest 17 on Worthing site

Immigration Enforcement officers arrested 17 construction workers on a site in Worthing during a raid yesterday.

Acting on intelligence and supported by Sussex Police, the officers visited the site in Brighton Road at 10am and carried out immigration checks.

They found 17 men working illegally. Ten, aged 18-31, were from Albania and a further seven aged 28-63 were from India.

A total of 11 of the men – nine Albanians and two Indians – were understood to have entered the UK illegally and six – one Albanian and five Indians – had overstayed their visas.

All are currently in immigration detention pending removal from the UK.

Housebuilder Westbrooke Developments, part of the Roffey Homes Group, said all of the men arrested were working for a London-based concrete frame contractor and that it employed only local people.

In a statement, the company said: "All our employees live in Sussex and have been checked for eligibility to work in the UK. Our site management require details of all project workers to ensure they are qualified to work on site. If anyone fails this test they do not come on site.

"The visit by Immigration Officials to our site today relates to the concrete frame contractor, a London based company. Due to the scale of the project, they have supplemented local labour with labour from outside of Sussex.

"This sub-contractor is responsible for carrying out their own checks before sending their labour to site. Although it is their responsibility to carry out thorough checks on their workforce, we shall review what additional procedures we can implement to ensure that only those who are legally allowed to work on our site are able to do so."