IRATE local residents heckled members of the Home Office at a public meeting held in Sittingbourne to debate controversial plans to convert the town's only hotel into an induction centre for asylum seekers.

There was also a call at the meeting for Swale council’s chief executive, Chris Edwards, to resign over the Coniston Hotel issue.

Bill Jeffries, director general of the Immigration Nationality Directorate, came under intense pressure to explain the actions of the National Asylum Support Service.

Mr Jeffries admitted mistakes had been made. He stressed: “We acknowledge that this should, and could, have been handled better. We have learned lessons from this and are quite clear that we have got to go through a consultation process.”

NASS failed to conduct a proper consultation process over the suitability of either the Coniston Hotel, or Sittingbourne, to house an asylum induction centre. They also ignored council and police advice not to set it up in the town and signed a contract with Accommodata to run the centre. The plan is currently on hold.

Mr Edwards was forced to defend his position on several occasions and maintained that he had not done anything wrong. He was accused by a member of the audience of letting down the people of the town.

The meeting was held to allow members of the public to question prominent speakers involved in the row.

The 300-capacity hall was full with hundreds more people crammed outside for two hours waiting to hear what had happened. Dozens of police officers were also in attendance.

At the end of the meeting, constituency MP Derek Wyatt (Lab) called for an independent consultation and for more public meetings to take place.