Hotel accommodation for migrants to continue despite £6m-a-day cost

Hotels are being turned into "longer-term" accommodation for asylum seekers despite pledges by Rishi Sunak to end their use.

Owners are reopening disused hotels and negotiating "longer-term" deals with the Home Office to take hundreds of migrants.

The moves suggest asylum seekers will be housed in hotels for what ministers admit will be “longer than originally envisaged” as they race to open alternative bigger sites such as former military bases.

The Prime Minister pledged in January to “end the appalling situation where taxpayers are paying to keep illegal migrants in hotels”.

Five bigger sites have so far been identified to reduce the £6 million-a-day cost of housing 51,000 asylum seekers in nearly 400 hotels but the Government is facing opposition over transforming them into migrant accommodation.

It has now emerged that the 170-year-old Great Northern Hotel in Peterborough is to be converted into "longer-term contingency accommodation".

Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, told local Tory MP Paul Bristow earlier this month that the Home Office needed to “use emergency accommodation hotels for a longer period than originally envisaged and this has resulted in the conversion of this hotel to longer-term contingency accommodation".

Mr Bristow said it was “the wrong hotel in the wrong place and the wrong time” as the 41-bedroom venue was part of an £8 million regeneration scheme for the station quarter of the city.

The Home Office is also in talks to reopen a disused hotel in the centre of Worthing, West Sussex, to house asylum seekers despite it recently being denied planning application to change its use to a shared living accommodation comprising 44 en-suite bedrooms with shared kitchen, dining and living spaces.

The Windsor House hotel in Worthing has been closed for a year and former minister Tim Loughton, the local MP, said it was the “wrong place” in a densely populated area with a large number of similar properties and hostels.

“We have got to step up alternative accommodation such as army barracks or barges. Why do we need to bring more hotels into use if they are saying the priority is to empty them? Any attempt to rebadge them as hostels would be disingenuous,” he said.

'It’s easy to say it but we have to do it'

The owners of a second disused country house hotel, Northop Hall in North Wales, are proposing to turn it into a site for 400 “predominantly male” asylum seekers, of which 250 would be housed in “modular accommodation” on its grounds.

They are seeking planning permission for the plans with a pre-application consultation already completed earlier this month.

Local MP Rob Roberts, a member of the Conservative Party but sitting as an independent, warned that local services would not cope but said he had been assured by ministers that the “change of use” would not go ahead unless it secured all the planning and regulatory permissions.

“Ministers said they were going to stop using hotels and put out press releases saying we are going to stop their use so why go on with it? It’s easy to say it but we have to do it,” he said.

Ministers have not set a timescale on ending the use of hotels although they have pledged to clear the backlog of 92,600 initial asylum claims by the end of the year.

However, the Government faces legal action with the first case due to come to court on Wednesday when Braintree District Council seeks an injunction to block plans to turn the former RAF Wethersfield base in Essex into a camp for up to 1,700 asylum seekers.

Similar action is being threatened against asylum plans for RAF Scampton, the former Dambusters squadron base in Lincolnshire, a barge in Portland Port near Weymouth, Dorset, and HMP Northeye, a former prison in Bexhill, east Sussex.

Regarding the Great Northern Hotel, a Peterborough City Council spokesman said: "We are still in ongoing discussions with the Home Office and are keeping all options open at the moment, including potential legal action."

It is thought the council could take action on the basis that there has been a material change of use from a hotel to a hostel in breach of planning rules.

A government spokesman said:“The number of people arriving in the UK who require accommodation has reached record levels and has put our asylum system under incredible strain.

“The use of hotels to house asylum seekers is unacceptable – there are currently more than 51,000 asylum seekers in hotels costing the UK taxpayer £6 million a day.  

“The Home Office is committed to making every effort to reduce hotel use as a contingency solution and limit the burden on the taxpayer.”