Council right to try closing asylum hotels, says Reform UK MP

Deputy leader of Reform UK Richard Tice says closing asylum hotels is what voters want

The deputy leader of Reform UK said a council was "completely right" to try closing three hotels that were being used to house asylum seekers.

West Northamptonshire Council has issued planning contravention notices to the owners of the hotels which have been used by the Home Office as migrant accommodation.

Richard Tice, the Reform UK MP for Boston and Skegness, told the BBC that people living in the area were "furious" about the issue and claimed stopping the use of hotels would deter people coming to Britain to claim asylum.

The government said the use of hotels was a temporary measure while it dealt with a backlog of asylum cases and until new measures to tackle illegal immigration started to work.

Reform UK and its leader Nigel Farage wants hotels to stop being used to house asylum seekers

West Northamptonshire Council said the three hotels could be breaching planning rules by accommodating asylum seekers and the planning contravention notices could be the first step to enforcement action.

Such action is expensive and time consuming, but Tice said that trying to close the hotels was a good use of public money.

"People don't want them near them," he said, "in Northamptonshire and elsewhere they are furious about what's going on with these illegal hotels which, by the way, also destroy local jobs.

"Our policy of having detention centres in remote areas away from residential areas is what the voters want. That's why we're leading in the polls."

Tice dismissed the government's claims that hotels were a temporary option, adding that 50,000 people have crossed the channel since Labour came to power.

Ministers said the number of hotels being used for asylum seekers has almost halved over the last two years and the number of migrants being housed in them fell by almost 6,000 in the first six months of 2025.

A government spokesman said: "We inherited an asylum system in chaos [and] have taken urgent action to fix that system, doubling the rate of asylum decision-making, and reducing the amount of money spent on asylum hotels by almost a billion pounds in the last financial year.

"We will continue to work closely with community partners across the country, and discuss any concerns they have as we look to close every hotel by the end of this Parliament."

Saving money

Tice was speaking ahead of his party's conference which opens on Friday in Birmingham.

As well as celebrating its lead in the opinion polls, Reform UK said it would highlight its success in this year's local elections, which saw it taking over the running of 13 councils including both West and North Northamptonshire councils.

Since winning control of the councils the party said it has launched efficiency drives and it pointed to a new software licensing agreement in West Northamptonshire Council and the controversial removal of net zero targets as examples of ways in which it believed it was providing a better deal for council tax payers.

Tice said he has now identified savings of about £4m that both authorities could make every year by changing pension providers.

"Due to high fees and underperformance council tax payers are having to contribute more into these pension funds.

"If you manage them properly you can save money which you can invest, for example, in better social care provision," he said.

Reform UK supporters celebrated after taking control of North Northamptonshire Council in May

Two of Reform UK's five MPs who won their seats in last year's general election have left the party and now sit as Independents.

Several local councillors have done the same, including two in Northamptonshire.

Tice shrugged it off: "We're going up in the polls, we're winning [council] by-elections including in the East. Wait until the elections next year."

When asked if he could be certain that if people vote Reform UK the councillor or MP would stay loyal to the party, he responded: "Hopefully yes, but you can't guarantee everything."