The Home Office has announced the closure of 13 more hotels previously used for asylum accommodation in England, taking another tranche of contingency rooms out of the system. In policy terms, the move continues the department's attempt to reduce reliance on town and city hotels, cut accommodation costs and replace emergency procurement with a more managed estate.
This latest round follows 11 hotel closures announced in April and a further 20 in June. The government says fewer than 160 asylum hotels now remain in use, with the newest 13 closures expected to save £51 million and total projected savings from this year's hotel exits reaching £224 million. Ministers also say asylum accommodation costs have fallen by almost £1 billion since the 2024 general election. That claim is set against the 2023 peak, when 400 hotels were in use at a reported cost of £9 million a day.
The accommodation strategy is not simply about reducing capacity; it is about moving capacity into larger, more basic sites. The Home Office says discussions have begun on three additional former Ministry of Defence locations, with planning permission being sought for MOD Bicester and MOD Barnham and discussions under way on MOD Linton-on-Ouse. Taken together, the three sites could eventually house around 3,750 asylum seekers. That marks a further shift away from dispersed hotel provision and towards a smaller number of concentrated accommodation settings.
The existing estate is also being kept in place for longer. The government is seeking to extend use of the Crowborough site until 2030 and Wethersfield beyond 2027, indicating that former military accommodation is becoming a medium-term rather than temporary element of the asylum system. For councils and local service providers, that changes the administrative task rather than removing it. Pressure may ease in some town centres as hotels return to the visitor economy, but transport, healthcare access, safeguarding and community liaison still need to be organised around larger sites.
Alongside the estate changes, ministers have brought in a new 24-week target for deciding asylum and immigration appeals involving people in accommodation and foreign national offenders. The Home Office says the target is intended to reduce the current average wait of 67 weeks, speed up case resolution and shorten the time people spend in taxpayer-funded accommodation. That matters because delays in appeals have a direct cost effect. Faster determinations can reduce time in the accommodation estate, but only if casework, tribunal listing and removal processes move at a similar pace.
The hotel closures are being presented as one element of a wider reform programme. According to the government, record numbers of asylum decisions have been made since July 2024, nearly 70,000 people have been removed, and the forthcoming Immigration and Asylum Bill will create a route for swifter removal of those in the UK unlawfully. Immigration Minister Anna Turley said the purpose of the latest change is to end the use of town-centre hotels and move people into larger, basic accommodation. The official argument is that this will restore control over accommodation management while lowering public expenditure.
For the local areas affected, the immediate effect is straightforward: hotel rooms can return to paying guests, normal business use or redevelopment, and the Home Office says that should support footfall, jobs and visitor activity. The properties named in the announcement are the Ramada Jarvis Hotel in Loughborough, Chimney House Hotel in Sandbach, Britannia Ashley Hotel in Hale, Gold Thorn Hotel in Wolverhampton, Grand Metropole Hotel in Blackpool, Nottingham Hotel in Nottingham, Grosvenor Hotel in Stratford-upon-Avon, Staycity Apartments Deptford Bridge in Lewisham, Needham House in Hitchin, Holiday Inn in Bridgwater, Holiday Inn Express in Dunstable, Dubrovnik Hotel in Bradford and Best Western Brook Hotel in Norwich. Viewed together, the announcement is less about a single round of closures than about a reorganisation of the asylum estate: fewer hotels, more large sites, faster appeals and a stronger legislative push behind removals.