The 15 Citrus Hotel in Cheltenham is one of 11 hotels across the UK that will no longer serve as accommodation for asylum seekers as part of a new government initiative to reduce costs and manage resources more efficiently.
Announced on Tuesday, April 14, this decision reflects a broader strategy to transition asylum seekers from hotels to more basic, large-scale facilities such as converted military barracks. The government hopes to save approximately £65 million annually through this consolidation.
At the peak under the previous Conservative administration, about 400 hotels nationwide housed asylum seekers. That number has now fallen to fewer than 190. Critics have raised concerns over the use of hotels, citing issues like community disruption and rising expenses. Some hotels, including Cheltenham’s 15 Citrus Hotel and others like the Britannia Hotel in Wolverhampton and OYO Lakeside in St Helens, have also faced public protests.
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Borders Minister Alex Norris emphasized that hotels were intended as a temporary solution but have evolved into an expensive, unsustainable system. “We are shutting them down by moving people into more basic accommodation, scaling up large sites, removing record numbers of people with no right to remain,” Norris said. “This is about restoring control, ending waste, and handing hotels back to the community for good.”
The Home Office confirmed further closures will be announced in the near future. Hundreds of asylum seekers have already been relocated, including 350 individuals moved to the former Crowborough barracks in East Sussex, which began housing asylum seekers in January.
As of late last year, around 30,657 asylum seekers were housed in hotels—a 15 percent decrease from September but still higher than the record low earlier this year before the 2024 general election. Hotel numbers peaked at 56,018 in September 2023. Concurrently, the use of dispersal accommodations—privately managed houses, flats, or rooms available to asylum seekers facing destitution—has increased by nearly 3,000 over 2025.
Opposition figures, including Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp, have criticized the government’s handling of the situation, pointing to the sustained high numbers of asylum seekers in hotels and apartments. Philp advocates for leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to expedite deportations, claiming current policies fail to control illegal immigration effectively.
The government remains focused on transitioning away from hotel accommodations to cost-effective and community-friendly housing solutions for asylum seekers.