A hotel wants to turn itself into a detention centre for illegal immigrants.

Though the Home Office maintains it has no need for an extra removals centre in Sussex, a planning application has been lodged to turn a Gatwick hotel into a unit to house people waiting for deportation.

There are already two large centres in the area, with room for 152 people, and Brook House, which opened this year with capacity for 426 men.

The 254-room Mercure Hotel in Povey Cross Road at Gatwick applied for permission to turn itself into an immigration removals centre from Crawley Borough Council earlier this month.

No-one from Arora Management Services, which is behind the bid, was prepared to comment yesterday on the reasons for the planned change.

The application read: "No new buildings or extensions are proposed or alterations to the external appearance of the building.

"Internally, the existing rooms, communal and back of house areas would be modified to provide a range of one person, two person and family rooms, together with recreational, kitchen and dining areas.

"The key role of removal centres is to house detainees prior to their departure from the country.

"It is therefore important to have a number of removals centres at the international airports from where detainees will leave the country."

A spokeswoman for the UK Border Agency said the Government is not looking for an extra site in the area.

She said: “We have no plans to build a removal centre at Gatwick.”

David Grant, a community development worker based in Brighton who works with refugees’ organisations, said detention centres are not the right way to treat people whose applications to stay in the country have failed, or have not yet been heard.

He said: “It would probably make more sense to work out why people are trying to come here and our responsibility for people who are fleeing certain places.

“People are treated as criminals first, without having their cases heard.

“I would not be happy to see another one created.”