Home Office confirms closure of asylum lodges throughout UK – full listing | Politics | News | EUROtoday

The Home Office has confirmed the closure of 11 asylum lodges throughout the UK with “multiple more” set to comply with.

The authorities mentioned the closures come because it “ramps up action” to finish using lodges for unlawful migrants as a part of efforts to “fix the broken asylum system”. According to the Home Office, the newest spherical of closures alone will save the taxpayer nearly £65 million per yr as lodges are given again to native communities. The transfer brings the whole variety of lodges used to accommodate asylum seekers beneath 190, having peaked at round 400 beneath the Conservatives.

At the tip of 2025, the variety of individuals being housed in lodges stood at 30,657, down 15% on September, however the quantity remains to be manner above the file low of 29,561 simply earlier than the 2024 common election. But on the similar time, the variety of individuals in “dispersal accommodation” rose by nearly 3,000 over 2025. Dispersal lodging sometimes contains privately managed homes, flats or rooms in properties of a number of occupancy, and is simply out there to asylum seekers who would in any other case be destitute.

Shadow house secretary Chris Philp mentioned, regardless of the newest closures, the newest figures present extra asylum seekers in lodges than on the time of the election.

He mentioned: “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 Minister 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 or apartments. But Labour is too weak to do that.”

Among the 11 closures are lodges that drew protests final yr, together with the Britannia Hotel in Wolverhampton and the OYO Lakeside in St Helens.

Labour mentioned the closures are being pushed by reforms launched by the Home Secretary, together with growing removals of individuals with no proper to stay and shifting these within the system out of pricy lodges.

The authorities additionally mentioned it’s scaling up using giant, primary lodging websites as an alternative to maneuver individuals out of lodges “for good”.

According to the newest Home Office figures, as much as 350 unlawful migrants have been moved to the Crowborough army barracks, in East Sussex, which opened to asylum seekers in January. The Home Office mentioned those that are housed and have their asylum claims rejected will likely be faraway from the UK.

The following 11 asylum lodges throughout the UK have now been closed and extra are because of comply with “in the coming weeks”:

• Banbury House Hotel – Banbury, Oxfordshire
• Marine Court Hotel – Bangor, Ards and North Down
• 15 Citrus Hotel – Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
• Holiday Inn Heathrow – Hillingdon, London
• Britannia Hotel – Wolverhampton
• Madeley Court Hotel – Madeley, Telford & Wrekin
• OYO Lakeside – St Helens, Merseyside
• Crewe Arms Hotel – Crewe, Cheshire East
• Sure Hotel by Best Western – Aberdeen
• The Rock Hotel – Halifax, Calderdale
• Wool Merchant Hotel – Halifax, Calderdale
  

Border Security and Asylum Minister Alex Norris mentioned: “Hotels were meant to be a short‑term stop‑gap 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. This is about restoring control, ending waste, and handing hotels back to the community for good.”