Asylum hotel closures may shift cost to councils, councillors warn

Local authorities may have to house migrants in the very same hotels the government has announced it will no longer use, councillors have warned.

The government plans to end contracts with 50 hotels housing asylum seekers by the end of the year.

Official figures show hiring these hotels cost the taxpayer £8m a day.

Speaking exclusively to the BBC, the Local Government Association (LGA) said this cost may pass to councils, who are required to house refugees in need.

Shaun Davies, chairman of the LGA, said councils were legally obliged to find somewhere to stay for the large numbers of refugees representing as homeless after leaving hotel accommodation when their asylum application was processed.

"We've got a housing shortage, we've got a huge demand on temporary accommodation, and we've got councils in financial strain," Mr Davies, who is also a Labour councillor in Telford, said.

• Is the asylum backlog going down and other claims checked

• Where are asylum seekers being housed in hotels?

• How is the UK stopping Channel crossings?

Mr Davies questioned where local governments were supposed to house refugees once they became councils' responsibilities.

While hotels were not a "long-term solution" for housing refugees, Mr Davies said the question had to be, "If not those hotels, then where?"

"That's the irony in this situation, that one part of the system might boast that they're doing relatively well but actually, that's shunting the issue and the cost to local taxpayers," he said.

Speaking to BBC Breakfast, Immigration minister Robert Jenrick said the government was "standing up cheaper and more appropriate forms of accommodation - instead of being housed in sometimes luxurious hotels, asylum seekers will be housed in disused military sites and barges like in Portland".

Ending contracts

About 400 hotels are being used to house record numbers of asylum seekers, the BBC understands.

The use of hotels has increased exponentially as the number of people claiming asylum in the UK has increased, reaching a near 20-year high of 74,751 last year, according to Home Office data.

Mr Jenrick said agreements with France and Albania along with stricter penalties for those connected to illegal migration had helped reduce the numbers arriving in small boats, enabling the government to start ending the use of asylum hotels.

He added the government would continue to house people on the Bibby Stockholm barge in Portland. The vessel, which has a capacity of 500, is currently holding 50 people.

How many asylum seekers are living in hotels and where are they based?

• At the end of June 2023 there were 50,546 asylum seekers living in hotels in the UK

• This is a 10% increase compared with the end of 2022, when there were 45,775 people living in hotels

• In March 2023, government sources told the BBC there were 395 hotels being used for this purpose

• The majority of them - 363 - were in England, 20 in Northern Ireland, 10 in Scotland and two in Wales

• Between April 2022 and March 2023, the government spent about £2.3bn on hotel accommodation

During his House of Commons statement, Mr Jenrick tried to reassure local authorities that the government would "limit the impact on local communities".

But Mr Davies said he was frustrated that the government had not seen the LGA as "a key stakeholder or consultee" in the build-up to yesterday's announcement.

He called on the government to publish the list of the 50 hotels that would be wound down and provide further funding for councils struggling to cope with the pressure.

Mr Davies said: "The deep irony is that it might be the same hotels that the government are looking to close down for their purposes, are the very same hotels that local authorities will have to stand up and fund for temporary accommodation."

Asylum seekers being granted refugee status, Afghan refugees coming to the UK from third countries and Ukrainian refugees who were previously paired with hosts could all be turning to their local authorities for help, Mr Davies said.

"There's also a huge amount of demand in the system from people who live in local communities because of the cost-of-living crisis, but also because of changes within the private sector itself," he said.

"So, councils are seeing huge demands, the highest levels of demand on temporary accommodation since records began at a time when council finances are stretched."

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