The Twente municipality of Tubbergen has “not properly” dealt with complaints about the arrival of an asylum seeker center in the village of Albergen. This is the conclusion of National Ombudsman Reinier van Zutphen a report published on Wednesday. The municipality’s choices “possibly unintentionally” caused residents to feel “not actively seen and heard.”
In 2022 it was announced that Landhotel ‘t Elshuys in Albergen would be converted into a shelter for three hundred asylum seekers. This led to fierce protests, arson and threatening and intimidating mayor Anko Postma and various council members. The asylum seekers’ center finally opened in September 2025. It houses 150 people.
Several residents of Albergen filed complaints about the actions and communications of the municipality of Tubbergen. “By appointing lawyers from the law firm that was previously involved in cases surrounding the arrival of the asylum seekers’ center as complaint handlers and by appointing a lawyer from another firm that represented the municipality, citizens did not have the idea that the municipality was listening to their complaints,” the ombudsman writes.
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By leaving the procedures to lawyers, the municipality was “not or insufficiently visible to its residents.” “This was a situation in which there was a lot of emotion and feelings from both the residents and the municipality,” says the ombudsman. “Some citizens had to deal with four lawyers during the hearing and felt not heard and sometimes even intimidated.”
Van Zutphen also criticizes the fact that the municipality handled the complaints up to nine months after the set period of fourteen weeks. However, Tubbergen has tried “sincerely and with great effort” to create peace, the ombudsman writes, but this has “not yet succeeded”. In January, the ombudsman will discuss his conclusions with Mayor Postma. That leaves opposite the regional newspaper Tubantia already know: “Afterwards we found that our approach could have come across as distant.”
Van Zutphen signals in a separate press release that residents are increasingly submitting complaints about the arrival of an asylum seekers’ center. “The conversation stalls, the debate hardens and sometimes the unrest turns into threats. As a society, we will have to accommodate people who need protection in our country. That requires something from both sides, both the municipality and the resident.”
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