A Cheltenham hotel is one of eleven across the UK set to stop housing asylum seekers as part of a government initiative to reduce costs and transfer residents to alternative sites such as military barracks.
On Tuesday, April 14, ministers announced that 11 hotels currently accommodating asylum seekers would cease participation in the scheme. Among these is the 15 Citrus Hotel in Cheltenham. Several other hotels nationwide, including those previously protested against like the Britannia Hotel in Wolverhampton and OYO Lakeside in St Helens, will also end asylum seeker housing.
At its height under Conservative leadership, around 400 hotels were used for asylum seeker accommodation, but this number has now fallen below 190. Officials claim this reduction will save the public over £65 million annually.
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Borders Minister Alex Norris commented that hotels were intended as a temporary solution but had grown excessively costly and burdensome to local communities. He stated, “We are closing them by moving people into more basic accommodations, scaling up larger sites, and increasing removals of individuals without the right to remain. This plan is focused on restoring control, cutting waste, and returning hotels to the community permanently.”
The Home Office confirmed that more hotel closures will be announced soon. So far, hundreds of asylum seekers have been relocated, including 350 moved into the former Crowborough barracks in East Sussex, which began operating as accommodation in January.
By the end of last year, 30,657 asylum seekers were being housed in hotels—a 15% decrease from September but still above the record low of 29,561 recorded shortly before the 2024 general election. The peak was in September 2023 when 56,018 people were housed in hotels. Concurrently, the number residing in “dispersal accommodation”—private houses, flats, or shared rooms meant for asylum seekers at risk of destitution—increased by nearly 3,000 during 2025.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp criticized the government’s approach, noting that recent figures show more asylum seekers in hotels than at the general election time. He accused the government of relocating people into residential apartments to obscure the real situation, limiting housing availability for young people trying to enter the property market.
Philp stated, “Most asylum seekers are illegal immigrants. Keir Starmer has allowed more small-boat illegal immigrants than any prime minister in history, with numbers up 45% since the election. The Conservative plan is to leave the European Convention on Human Rights so illegal immigrants can be deported within a week instead of being placed in hotels or apartments. However, Labour is too weak to enforce this.”
The BBC reports that the list of hotels ending housing services for asylum seekers is forthcoming.