The use of hotels as accommodation for asylum seekers in the UK has greatly increased since 2020, receiving a lot of media and policy attention. However, the reasons behind this rise can be unclear, and often receive little attention. In the early stages of the fieldwork for my PhD research, I’ve been speaking to different stakeholders about their perspectives on how and why there are so many asylum seekers now living in hotels. This first blog post shares initial findings from these interviews, as well as from my independent desk research.
Who are asylum seekers and why do they need accommodation?
The term ‘asylum seeker’ refers to someone who is claiming protection, outside of their country of origin, because of experiences or well-founded fears of persecution due to their race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion. In the UK, if an asylum seeker cannot cover the costs their accommodation and subsistence, they are eligible for Section 95 Asylum Support until they get a final decision on their asylum claim. As people seeking asylum have restrictions on being able to work in the UK, many are reliant on Section 95 support to survive. Through Section 95 support, housing is provided on a no-choice basis across the UK, meaning apart from in specific circumstances people have no say over what type of accommodation they live in or where they are housed. Section 95 support is available to asylum seekers until a decision is made, at which point they are then evicted from their asylum accommodation. This is typically 28 days’ notice, but changed temporarily to 7 days at the end of 2023. If granted their refugee status, they must register for a national insurance number and they can seek employment and receive mainstream welfare and benefits (e.g. Universal Credit) while they seek work. They are only eligible to be housed by local authorities if they are assessed as vulnerable, a classification which is used sparingly.
In 2019, £4.5 billion was contracted to Serco, Mears Group, and ClearSprings Ready Homes through the Asylum Accommodation and Support Contract (AASC) to provide accommodation and support to asylum seekers in the UK over a ten year period. This was also accompanied by a contract given to Migrant Help who were tasked with delivering a helpline for asylum seekers. Previously, asylum seekers were mostly housed in dispersal accommodation – usually a shared house or flat in the community. However, the onset of the pandemic saw a huge growth in the use of hotels as accommodation for asylum seekers. Numbers rose from 1,200 being accommodated in hotels prior to the pandemic in March 2020, rising to 9,500 by October of the same year. By June 2023 there were approximately 51,000 individuals residing in nearly 400 hotels across the UK. My research seeks to explore this growth in hotel accommodation, and the experiences of those living within them.
So why are there so many asylum seekers being housed in hotels?
My research so far has found that a complex web of social issues, processes and policies have led to the growth in hotel usage. As noted, the increase began during the early months of the pandemic. In some cases people were moved from dispersal accommodation into hotels as accommodation providers saw this hotels as easier to manage during lockdowns. Additionally, as the numbers needing accommodation began to grow after asylum processing was paused, hotels were used on a contingency basis, initially as a short-term solution in an unprecedented situation. At this time, many hotels were closed to usual business, and so were available to offer a temporary solution. As one stakeholder described to me:
“In Covid at this point the really cheap sites to accommodate a lot of people at the time were hotels, because no one was staying in hotels, so hotels are very cheap and hotel managers very happy to have the guaranteed income. So the Home Office started procuring hotel accommodation for asylum seekers” (local authority stakeholder)
However, following the pandemic, the backlog of asylum cases continued to grow, and hotel usage shifted from a short-term basis to long term accommodation.
The increasing backlog in the years following the pandemic, alongside a broader housing crisis combined to create what one stakeholder described as a “perfect storm”. These were the two factors most commonly identified by stakeholders interviewes as being the key drivers behind increased hotel use, and are therefore explored in more detail below.
- The asylum backlog
The asylum backlog refers to the number of asylum cases who are waiting for a Home Office decision. Although an increase in arrivals and the temporary pause to decision making during the covid-19 pandemic have both contributed to a growing backlog, analysis shows a backlog was already growing which many have attributed to slow decision making at the Home Office. Previously it would take on average 6 months for a claim to be processed, whereas now many applicants are waiting well over a year and some much longer. Stakeholders reported challenges with staffing at the Home Office leading to slow decision making, which is exacerbating the backlog:
“Before the pandemic it was obvious that what had happened was the Home Office had been hollowed out in terms of efficient decision making, and a huge number of senior staff have basically been moved off the asylum system. So, it was left with a much smaller number of basically junior staff who couldn’t make good decisions fast, and the backlog began to climb and then everything kind of coincided” (local authority stakeholder)
Thus claimants are reliant upon Section 95 Asylum Support for much longer periods, and as new people arrive they are adding to the numbers requiring support rather than taking the place of someone moving out of the system. As one stakeholder highlighted:
“You have a situation where people enter the UK and just keep coming into hotels, and people aren’t leaving hotels, meaning more hotels have to be opened” (voluntary sector stakeholder)
The UK Government and Home Office have been taking steps to try and reduce the backlog. At the end of 2022 the Prime Minister made an explicit commitment to tackling the ‘legacy backlog’, which refers to those who had claimed asylum before June 2022 and were still awaiting a decision. One method which was used to do this was by creating a streamlined asylum process for countries with high grant rates – namely, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Libya, Syria and Yemen in which claimants were asked to complete questionnaires so did not have to await an interview. In January 2024 the government announced it had cleared some of the legacy backlog. Although this statement has been questioned, with data showing there were still approximately 4,500 people in the legacy backlog at that stage. Deeper analysis showed that the backlog, which had supposedly been cleared, did not include nearly a quarter of the decisions being made relating to withdrawals. These individuals are likely to remain in the UK and will have to re-enter the system at some point.
2. The housing crisis
Prior to 2012 accommodation for asylum seekers was mostly provided by local authorities. In 2012 the UK government then shifted the responsibility for housing asylum seekers from local authorities to private accommodation providers, a model further refined in the 2019 AASC described above. When responsibility was first shifted from local authorities to the private sector, accommodation providers would seek to identify cheap properties to house asylum seekers in. However, over time a national housing crisis and increased demand has impeded providers ability to secure sufficient affordable housing.
The UK’s housing crisis is characterised by a chronic lack of affordable housing. The housing crisis generates homelessness, increases the numbers of people living in temporary accommodation for long periods, and increases the number of people unable to pay their high rent costs. The housing crisis has not only affected Home Office accommodation providers, but also local authorities who although no longer being responsible for housing asylum seekers still have a duty to prevent homelessness and provide accommodation for anyone deemed vulnerable. Both local authorities and accommodation providers are scrambling to acquire sufficient properties to meet the demand they are facing. As one stakeholder described to me:
“So you’ve got those subcontractors like ClearSprings and Serco in a bidding war basically with local authorities for really poor accommodation in the community, that they could use for asylum dispersal accommodation, and not really getting it. And that kind of being an ongoing problem” (voluntary sector stakeholder)
With limited suitable properties available, and faced with increasing demands for housing, both Home Office accommodation providers and local authorities have had to identify alternative options. With a duty to prevent homelessness of anyone deemed vulnerable, many local authorities, just like Home Office accommodation providers, are reliant on alternative forms of temporary accommodation such as hotels, hostels and B&Bs. Just like for those in the asylum system, this accommodation is unsuitable especially for long term use. As one local authority stakeholder told me:
“We have a housing crisis, with or without asylum seekers. Asylum seekers are by no means the only people living in appalling, unsuitable and temporary accommodation. Local authorities are running out of temporary accommodation and struggling, and you know we simply don’t have enough available rented housing for people who can’t afford to buy, and most people can’t afford to buy because of house price inflation.” (local authority stakeholder)
The housing crisis has meant that hotels are being used to fill in gaps in affordable housing, not only for asylum seekers but also those requiring housing from their local authority.
What next?
In summary, the use of hotels to accommodate asylum seekers in the UK results from a complex set of circumstances such as the asylum backlog and the housing crisis. These have occurred within the broader context of privatisation of asylum accommodation, and a global pandemic. This blog has set out some of the context for my research, and provided a brief introduction to how the use of hotel accommodation on such a scale has come about.
My research looks in depth at the experiences of asylum seekers living in hotels and aims to understand how hospitality is or isn’t offered to asylum seekers in the UK through Home Office hotel accommodation; and the implications of living in such accommodation on the lives of asylum seekers as they establish ‘home’ in the UK. As I continue with my research I will be posting insights and sharing findings on this blog, so please do sign up to my newsletter below if you would like to be updated:
Asylum Seeker Hotels Research 
Leave a comment