The Home Office is set to end their contract with Stay Belvedere Hotels, who currently provide around a quarter of hotels used to house migrants waiting for decisions on asylum applications.
The Home Office stated that this agreement is to cease ‘at the earliest opportunity’ in September next year due to performance concerns. Stay Belvedere have been sub-contracted under a contract between the government and Clearspring, an accommodation provider, and provides 51 hotels being used to house asylum applicants. The Home Office has said that they were putting ‘robust plans in place’ to minimise disruption to those in hotel accommodation.
The BBC reports that a Home Office audit identified issues with Stay Belvedere’s behaviour as a supplier but that the Home Office did not publish further details. With safety, security and value of money said to be the priority of the Home Office, border security Minister Dame Angela Eagle also stated that ‘since July, we have improved contract management and added more oversight of our suppliers of asylum accommodation’.
This is the first time the Home Office has cancelled a contract a major provider in its 10 years of outsourcing asylum accommodation.
A BBC Verify Freedom of Information request highlighted that there were 218 hotels used for asylum seekers in December 2024 which accommodated 38,079 people. This is around 34% of the overall asylum seekers supported in the UK, with other migrants being supported in different types of accommodation or with subsistence support only.
Hotels for asylum seekers has been the subject of many reports of unsafe accommodation, with The Justice Gap reporting in July 2024 that hundreds of children living in Home Office hotels have gone missing, and are likely to have been trafficked.
Stay Belvedere Hotels also operate Napier barracks, which will additionally no longer house asylum seekers. This accommodation was reported on by Metro in 2020, describing ‘harrowing’ and ‘inhumane’ conditions, with asylum seekers living there being ‘scared, depressed and traumatised’.
In their manifesto, Labour had pledged to stop using hotels to house asylum seekers, though the government has not released a date by which they wish to achieve this.
The announcement to sever the contract with Stay Belvedere Hotels comes just a day after the Treasury admits that ‘migrants will be housed in temporary accommodation for years to come’.
