13 asylum hotels close in England as military sites expand

Thirteen more hotels in England are no longer being used to house asylum seekers, according to a Home Office announcement, and ministers say the buildings are being handed back to local communities. If you have followed the debate around asylum hotels, this is a notable step, but it is not the end of the accommodation system. It is a change in where people are housed while their claims are being dealt with. That distinction matters. A hotel closure can mean a town-centre building returns to tourism or another local use, but it does not mean the people who were staying there have vanished from the system. They are being moved elsewhere.

To understand why hotels were used in the first place, we need to start with backlog and capacity. Hotels became a stopgap when there were more people in the asylum system than there were suitable places to house them, and when claims and appeals were taking a long time. The government says the system reached a peak in 2023, when 400 hotels were in use at a cost of £9 million a day. Since then, the Home Office says 11 hotels closed in April, 20 more in June and another 13 have now followed, leaving fewer than 160 still in use. The latest closures are expected to save £51 million, taking the total projected saving from this year's hotel closures to £224 million.

The government is presenting the closures as good news for local economies. In the official statement, ministers argue that hotels in places such as Blackpool, market towns and urban centres can now return to paying guests or be adapted for other community uses, with possible benefits for cafés, shops, restaurants and nearby attractions. **What this means:** for some residents, this will feel like a visible reset. A hotel on a seafront or high street is not just a building; it shapes trade, footfall and how a place feels to the people who live there. But it is also worth remembering that reopening one site does not solve the wider housing pressure. It simply moves the pressure to another form of accommodation.

That is where the next part of the policy comes in. Rather than relying on town-centre hotels, the Home Office says it will increase the use of larger, more basic accommodation, including former military sites. Discussions have begun on three more Ministry of Defence sites: MOD Bicester, MOD Barnham and MOD Linton-on-Ouse. Together, the government says, they could eventually house around 3,750 asylum seekers. Ministers are also seeking to extend the use of existing sites, including Crowborough until 2030 and Wethersfield beyond 2027. For taxpayers, the argument is that bigger sites may be cheaper than hotels. For nearby communities and the people housed there, the trade-off is different: these sites can be more isolated, more controversial and further from everyday services.

The politics of the announcement are just as important as the numbers. Immigration minister Anna Turley said town and city hotels had become symbols of a broken asylum system and argued that moving people into former military sites would help the government restore control and fairness. When you read language like that, it helps to separate several issues that are often bundled together. Asylum accommodation is about where people stay while their cases are being decided. People seeking asylum are using a legal process to ask for protection, even though not every claim succeeds. Border enforcement and removals are about who is allowed to remain in the UK. The Home Office links the two in this announcement, but they are not exactly the same question, and treating them as one can blur the public debate.

The Home Office also says its wider reform programme has sped up decision-making. According to the announcement, record numbers of asylum decisions have been made since July 2024, and nearly 70,000 migrants have been removed. From 13 August 2026, a new 24-week target for deciding asylum and immigration appeals applies to people in accommodation and to foreign national offenders, compared with a current average wait of 67 weeks. **A useful check:** quicker decisions can reduce long hotel stays and bring costs down, but speed on its own is not enough. An asylum system still has to be accurate and fair. If cases are rushed, mistakes can be costly for the state and life-changing for the people involved.

The government says these hotel closures sit alongside a broader Immigration and Asylum Bill designed to speed up the removal of people with no right to stay in the UK. That is part of the government's political message: fewer hotels, faster decisions, tougher enforcement and lower costs. The Home Office also says asylum accommodation spending has fallen by almost £1 billion since the 2024 general election. **What to watch next:** the real test is whether the state can reduce hotel use without simply rebuilding the same pressures somewhere else. If casework improves, fewer people should be stuck in temporary accommodation for long periods. If it does not, large sites may become the next flashpoint instead of hotels.

The 13 hotels named by the government are Ramada Jarvis Hotel in Loughborough, Chimney House Hotel in Sandbach, Britannia Ashley Hotel in Hale, Gold Thorn Hotel in Wolverhampton, Grand Metropole Hotel in Blackpool and Nottingham Hotel in Nottingham. The list also includes Grosvenor Hotel in Stratford-upon-Avon, Staycity Apartments Deptford Bridge in Lewisham, Needham House in Hitchin, Holiday Inn in Bridgwater, Holiday Inn Express in Dunstable, Dubrovnik Hotel in Bradford and Best Western Brook Hotel in Norwich. If you are trying to make sense of the story, the simplest version is this: ministers are closing some asylum hotels and moving more people into larger former military sites, while promising faster decisions and lower costs. Whether that feels like a fix will depend on what matters most to you: local impact, public spending, or whether the asylum system becomes both quicker and fairer.