Hundreds of asylum seekers moved from hotels to army barracks, Home Office announces

Hundreds of asylum seekers have been removed from government-funded hotels while others have been sent to live in army barracks, the Home Office has announced.Eleven “asylum hotels” in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland have been closed, as first reported by the Guardian, and more will close “in the coming weeks”. About 350 claimants have been moved to the Crowborough military camp in East Sussex, described by a spokesperson as “basic accommodation”.The moves follow Keir Starmer’s pledge to close all hotels housing asylum seekers before the next general election. It comes weeks before Labour faces a potential wipeout in England’s local elections.Reform UK has continued to campaign for the closure of all 200 asylum hotels, which house approximately 30,000 people. Other asylum seekers – more than 70,000 people – live in other types of accommodation such as shared housing or military barracks.The number of hotels still used to house asylum seekers is 185, down from a peak of 400. Asylum seekers have little choice but to live in government-funded accommodation because they are forbidden from working for the first year they spend in the UK while their claims are being processed. The Home Office is obliged to house them.An anti-immigrant march took place in Crowborough, East Sussex in January this year. Photograph: Andrew Hasson/Andrew Hasson/The GuardianIn a statement, the Home Office said it was no longer housing asylum seekers in the Banbury House hotel in Oxfordshire, a three-storey Georgian building which had been the focus of some protests. The Marine Court hotel in Bangor, County Down, was in February closed to asylum seekers after four years of hosting them, the local authority said.The Citrus hotel in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, had been the focus of a campaign by local activists before it was emptied of asylum seekers some weeks ago. Other closed hotels include the Holiday Inn near Heathrow; the Britannia hotel in Wolverhampton; the Madeley Court hotel, near Telford, which was closed to asylum seekers earlier this week; the OYO Lakeside, in St Helens, Merseyside, which was vandalised in December; the Crewe Arms hotel in Crewe; the Sure hotel in Aberdeen; and the Rock hotel and the Wool Merchant hotel, both of which are in Halifax.Alex Norris, the immigration minister, said: “Hotels were meant to be a short-term stopgap under the previous government, but they spiralled out of control – costing taxpayers billions and dumping the consequences on local communities.“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.”Under the last government, asylum decision-making ground to a halt and hotel use spiralled to nearly 400 sites. According to the Home Office, the latest hotel closures will save £65m.Protests outside the hotels across England have became tense over the last two summers. Some protests turned violent, such as in Rotherham in August 2024 when protesters tried to set fire to a hotel with asylum seekers inside.Anti-immigration protesters clash with police officers in Rotherham in 2024. Photograph: Hollie Adams/ReutersRefugee NGOs say hotels are unsuitable for long-term accommodation. A parliamentary investigation found the government had squandered billions on a “failed, chaotic and expensive system”.Imran Hussain, the director of external affairs at Refugee Council, said large military sites are not a suitable alternative to hotels. “The government’s own spending watchdog previously found that they are more expensive than hotels, and they isolate people from local communities and essential services,” he said.“There is a better way to end the use of hotels,” Hussain added. “By giving permission to stay for a limited period – subject to rigorous security checks – to people from countries like Sudan and Iran, the government could empty hotels within a few months.”Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said there were more asylum seekers in hotels than at the time of the election. “That’s despite the government shunting people from hotels into residential apartments to hide what is going on,” said Philp. “Those apartments are then not available for young people struggling to get on the housing ladder.”