Number of asylum hotels falls to 185 after 11 close

Eleven hotels will no longer be used to house asylum seekers, bringing the total number down to 185 from a peak of around 400.

Home Office Minister Alex Norris said the fall was due to increased removals of people with no right to stay in the UK and housing others in alternative sites such as military barracks.

He said asylum hotels had been a "point of significant frustration" for local communities as well as acting as pull factor, encouraging people to come to the UK illegally.

The Conservatives said the government was "shunting people from hotels into residential apartments to hide what is going on".

Asylum seekers are not normally allowed to work in the first 12 months while they are waiting for their asylum claim to be processed and if they cannot secure their own place to live, the Home Office is legally required to house them.

The use of hotels to accommodate asylum seekers increased dramatically in 2020, driven by a backlog in processing asylum claims and a lack of long-term housing.

Their use has proved controversial, triggering protests in local communities and legal challenges from councils, as well as concerns over the cost.

In 2024-2025, £2.1bn was spent on hotels and the previous year the figure stood at £3bn - or £8.3m per day.

According to the figures published in December, there were 103,426 people in asylum accommodation, 30,657 of whom were in hotels.

Around two-thirds are housed in "dispersal accommodation" which normally means houses in the community.

The next official figures are due out in May but Norris said he expected the level of people in hotels to have fallen to below the level of 29,585 when Labour came to power.

The number of people being housed in asylum hotels peaked at more than 56,000 in 2023, under the Conservatives.

The numbers began to rise again after Labour took power but have since fallen.

The Labour government has promised to stop using hotels to accommodate asylum seekers by July 2029.

It says ending accommodation in the 11 hotels would save nearly £65m a year and that more closures would be announced in the coming weeks.

The hotels that have been closed to asylum seekers are:

• Banbury House Hotel – Banbury, Oxfordshire
• Marine Court Hotel – Bangor, Ards and North Down
• 15 Citrus Hotel – Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
• Holiday Inn Heathrow – Hillingdon, London
• Britannia Hotel – Wolverhampton
• Madeley Court Hotel – Madeley, Telford & Wrekin
• OYO Lakeside – St Helens, Merseyside
• Crewe Arms Hotel – Crewe, Cheshire East
• Sure Hotel by Best Western – Aberdeen
• The Rock Hotel – Halifax, Calderdale
• Wool Merchant Hotel – Halifax, Calderdale

Announcing the closures, Norris said ending hotel accommodation would reduce the number of people trying to get to the UK by crossing the English Channel.

"We know the traffickers say 'come to the UK, live in a hotel, work illegally'," he said.

"We're changing that reality, we're trying to reduce that pull factor."

Following its election in July 2024, the government had promised to reduce small boat crossings by smashing the trafficking gangs however, numbers have remained high with 100,625 arriving in 2025.

The government says it will ramp up the use of "large, basic accommodation sites to move people out of hotels for good".

Up to 350 illegal migrants have been moved to the Crowborough military barracks in East Sussex.

There have been local protests and some politicians objected with councillor Rachel Millward telling the BBC the Home Office had not engaged with the community or properly detailed the plans.

Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp said the government was "shunting people from hotels into residential apartments to hide what is going on".

"Those apartments are then not available for young people struggling to get on the housing ladder," he said.

"The Conservative plan is to leave the ECHR [European Convention on Human Rights] so that illegal immigrants are deported within a week of arrival - not put up in hotels or apartments. But Labour is too weak to do that."

Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesperson Max Wilkinson said: "Closing asylum hotels is right for both communities and asylum seekers themselves, but it doesn't fix the problem; it just move it elsewhere.

"The Liberal Democrats would slash the backlog and end the need for hotels by using Nightingale processing centres."

Reform UK home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf said: "It is absolutely shocking that the government is boasting about moving illegal migrants from one form of taxpayer-funded accommodation to another.

"Thousands have already invaded Britain this year, and more will follow unless Reform UK is in government. We would detain and deport every illegal migrant."

The Green Party has been contacted for a response.

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