11 asylum seeker hotels shut down by UK Government as new accommodation found

The closures include hotels that drew protests last year, including the Britannia Hotel in Wolverhampton and the OYO Lakeside in St Helens, with people moved to alternative accommodation

A further 11 hotels accommodating asylum seekers have shut their doors as the Government relocates individuals into alternative lodging.

The closures, announced on Tuesday evening, encompass establishments that attracted demonstrations last year, including the Britannia Hotel in Wolverhampton and the OYO Lakeside in St Helens.

The decision is anticipated to deliver savings of £65million annually and reduces the total number of hotels utilised for housing asylum seekers to below 190, having reached approximately 400 under the Conservatives. Borders minister Alex Norris stated hotels were intended as “a short-term stop-gap” but had “spiralled out of control, costing taxpayers billions and dumping the consequences on local communities”.

He declared: “We are shutting them down by moving people into more basic accommodation, scaling up large sites, removing record numbers of people with no right to remain.

“This is about restoring control, ending waste and handing hotels back to the community for good.”

The Home Office confirmed additional closures would be revealed “soon”.

Ministers have committed to ending the practice of using hotels to accommodate asylum seekers by the next election, with some individuals already being transferred to locations such as disused army barracks.

Home Office officials revealed some 350 people had now been relocated to the former barracks at Crowborough, in East Sussex, which began accepting asylum seekers in January.

The number of individuals accommodated in hotels stood at 30,657 at the close of 2025, a decrease of 15% since September but still above the record low of 29,561 just prior to the 2024 general election.

The figures had reached their peak in September 2023 at 56,018. Simultaneously, the count of people in “dispersal accommodation” increased by nearly 3,000 over 2025.

Dispersal accommodation typically comprises privately managed houses, flats or rooms in multi-occupancy properties, and is only accessible to asylum seekers who would otherwise be destitute.

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp stated: “The truth is, the most recent figures show there are more asylum seekers in hotels than at the time of the election.

“And that’s despite the Government 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.

“Most asylum seekers are illegal immigrants. Keir Starmer has let in more small boat illegal immigrants than any prime minster in history and numbers are 45% up since the election.

“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 to apartments. But Labour is too weak to do that.”