Chagos children ‘stuck for years in unsafe lodgings’

Families descended from islanders evicted from the Chagos Islands are being housed in council-allocated accommodation deemed by social services to be inappropriate for young children, the Observer has learned.

The latest revelations prompted fresh calls for an independent investigation into the treatment of British Chagossians, forcibly removed by the UK in the 1960s and early 70s to allow the US military to establish a base on the largest island, Diego Garcia.

Last month the Observer revealed British passport holders from the Chagos Islands were being systematically targeted by council officials to get them removed from the UK. Now it has emerged that British Chagossians in Crawley, West Sussex, are being accommodated in lodgings about which social services have expressed serious concerns.