Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s pledge to “end the costly use of asylum hotels in this parliament” is a unprecedented factor in British politics: a coverage supported via all main political events and a variety of refugee charities.
Reeves says finishing using asylum inns will save the Treasury £1 billion a yr. However for a central authority hastily dropping improve, finishing “hotel Britain” could also be central to their fashionable enchantment to regain keep an eye on over the asylum device.
At a time of economic instability and declining dwelling requirements, using inns to accommodate asylum seekers has greater considerably. Accommodations are related to break out, luxurious or trade. This explains why using inns has change into this sort of flashpoint for political controversy and fuelled resentment and tensions in some communities.
How did we get right here?
Beneath the UN refugee conference, Britain has a prison legal responsibility to accommodate other people whilst they’re looking forward to a choice on their declare to refugee standing. Duty for housing asylum seekers lies with the House Administrative center, which has contracts with 3 non-public corporations to supply lodging. Accommodations have traditionally been a small a part of this housing, best used for non permanent emergency quilt when housing within the non-public apartment sector is unavailable.
Lodge use rose sharply all over the COVID-19 pandemic. Personal contractors accountable for housing asylum seekers had been not able to seek out sufficient room in additional regimen “dispersal accommodation”.
Dispersal lodging comes to housing asylum seekers in shared homes around the nation. Those are in most cases shared homes or residences that non-public suppliers procure from the non-public apartment sector, or from subcontracted housing associations. Native authority homes don’t seem to be used. Asylum seekers don’t have any selection the place they’re housed.
As soon as somebody receives a choice on their asylum utility (granted or refused refugee standing), the House Administrative center stops offering them with housing and improve. However all over the pandemic, the House Administrative center briefly stopped this tradition, to steer clear of making other people homeless all over lockdown. However this intended extra other people had been staying longer in asylum housing. Accommodations supplied emergency housing all over this era.
RAF Wethersfield is among the large-scale lodging websites housing asylum seekers.
Joe Giddens/PA photographs
On the peak of lodge use, in June 2023, 51,000 asylum seekers had been housed in additional than 400 inns throughout the United Kingdom, costing the House Administrative center £8 million an afternoon. Via March 2025, this had fallen to 32,345 asylum seekers in 218 inns.
Using inns in this scale signifies that the device for housing asylum seekers in Britain is failing. Whilst inns can give adaptable emergency lodging, they don’t seem to be sustainable housing answers, nor do they provide the safety of a house.
The prices of ‘hotel Britain’
In 2024, lodge lodging for asylum seekers value on reasonable £158 in keeping with night time. Dispersal lodging, however, value on reasonable £20 in keeping with night time. The whole asylum lodging device value £4.7 billion, £3.1 billion of which went on inns.
Whilst expensive to taxpayers, this used to be extremely successful for the ones providing lodging.
In Would possibly 2025, the 3 suppliers shrunk via the federal government to ship housing had been reported to have made £380 million in take advantage of their lodging contracts. The Britannia Accommodations chain by myself reportedly revamped £150 million in benefit since first accommodating asylum seekers in 2014.
The prices had been greater than monetary. Asylum seekers have again and again raised the unintended effects on psychological and bodily well being related to confinement and isolation in inns, a loss of privateness and private area and the restricted get admission to to improve products and services.
Experiences of inns infested with bugs, collapsing ceilings and impolite and abusive workforce, mirror a style of lodging this is ill-suited to supporting the desires of prone citizens. This is a some distance cry from the “luxury” prerequisites incessantly described in media protection.
Accommodations have additionally change into focal issues for neighborhood tensions. Native citizens had been infrequently knowledgeable of using a lodge prematurely, and inns had been incessantly closed to different visitors at brief realize, with stories of weddings and different occasions being cancelled.
Communities no longer camps
To finish using inns, govt proposals have taken with increasing using large-scale lodging websites. This implies that classes from the final govt had been neglected within the rush to finish lodge lodging.
Mass lodging websites, similar to Wethersfield camp in Essex, don’t seem to be in a position to offer sustainable and dignified lodging. The usage of former army websites has been discovered to be dearer than inns and will additional isolate and stigmatise asylum seekers.
Sustainable lodging that meets the desires of asylum seekers and the general public calls for long-term way to substitute non permanent profiteering. A part of that technique will have to contain the use of native authority experience to offer dispersal housing in communities. Enjoy presentations that that is one of the best ways to scale back the prices of asylum whilst supporting the ones searching for safe haven. The federal government’s resettlement scheme for refugees fleeing the warfare in Syria presentations that attractive native government in housing and improve is essential to the good fortune of integration.
Any adjustments to asylum housing will create pressures for a UK housing sector in disaster. But the monetary and social prices of the present device can’t be neglected. Supporting native government within the building and supply of social housing should be a concern for the federal government, and housing asylum seekers will have to no longer be observed as a topic separate to that dedication.
