Sangatte II 'welcome centre' for refugees on their way to Britain will be built after all

The 'welcome centre' will cater for refugees assembling in Calais before trying to reach Britain.

Work started briefly on the centre before the French presidential election but was suspended.

Shortly after his election, the president, Nicolas Sarkozy, pledged: "There will be no new Sangatte while I am president.'

Now work is to resume. Jacky Henin, the port's communist mayor, said yesterday that the new buildings would open 'shortly'.

He has taken advantage of local government legislation to allow the work to go ahead.

The original Sangatte camp, near Calais, was a magnet for thousands of refugees, who regularly made the short walk to the nearby Channel Tunnel entrance to try to jump on to slow-moving trains.

The new centre will cope with the hundreds of homeless immigrants from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East who are living on the streets of Calais and in woods nearby.

It is being built near the ferry port where every night immigrants illegally try to sneak aboard lorries heading for Britain.

The finished centre will have ten showers and ten lavatories. It will also contain a medical facility open ten hours a day, an office for salaried staff and an information centre.

It will provide two meals a day as well as clothes, towels and blankets for the immigrants.

Although there will not officially be any sleeping facilities, beds will be available for those with 'special needs' - meaning anyone who is ill or otherwise not fit enough to sleep rough, said a spokesman for Calais town council.

The council has provided the land, water and electricity and paid for the modern prefabricated buildings, to which extra rooms could be 'bolted on'.

The centre is opposed by many businessmen and Calais residents. Mr Henin said: "I'm sorry that people are fighting between themselves. It's incredible."

He wants it to be operating by the autumn, so refugees can use it when the weather turn colder.

The Calais town council spokesman said: "It will simply be a charitable centre, with no overnight accommodation or any other facility which makes it into a new Sangatte.

"Planning permission has been granted by local government without the need for central government involvement."

The original Sangatte was shut by Mr Sarkozy in 2002 when he was interior minister.

In the three years before, 67,000 immigrants passed through it. The Red Cross camp's demolition was part of a deal which saw the UK take in 1,200 refugees from France.