The closure of a further 11 asylum hotels has been announced today
Cheryl Mullin and Christopher McKeon Press Association Political Correspondent
21:39, 14 Apr 2026
The OYO Lakeside Hotel in St Helens is one of 11 asylum hotels to be closed(Image: Google Maps)
A hotel on Merseyside is among 11 hotels accommodating asylum seekers that have shut their doors as the Government relocates individuals into alternative housing.
The closures, announced this evening, Tuesday April 14, feature hotels which sparked demonstrations last year, including the OYO Lakeside in St Helens. The decision is anticipated to deliver annual savings of £65 million and reduces the total number of hotels utilised for asylum seeker accommodation to below 190, down from a peak of approximately 400.
Borders minister Alex Norris stated hotels were intended to be “a short-term stop-gap” but had “spiralled out of control, costing taxpayers billions and dumping the consequences on local communities”.
He said: “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.
“This is about restoring control, ending waste and handing hotels back to the community for good.”
The Home Office indicated additional closures would be revealed “soon”.
A group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to the Border Security Command compound in Dover(Image: © 2026 PA Media, All Rights Reserved)
Ministers have committed to ending the practice of housing asylum seekers in hotels before the next election, with some individuals already being transferred to locations such as disused military barracks.
Home Office officials confirmed approximately 350 people have now been relocated to the former barracks at Crowborough, in East Sussex, which began accepting asylum seekers in January. The figure for individuals accommodated in hotels reached 30,657 by the close of 2025, representing a 15% decrease from September, though remaining higher than the record low of 29,561 recorded shortly before the 2024 general election.
Numbers had reached their peak in September 2023 at 56,018.
Simultaneously, those residing in “dispersal accommodation” increased by nearly 3,000 throughout 2025.
Dispersal accommodation generally comprises privately managed houses, flats or rooms in properties of multiple occupancy, and is exclusively available to asylum seekers who would otherwise face destitution.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said: “The truth is, the most recent figures show there are more asylum seekers in hotels than at the time of the election.
A group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to the Border Security Command compound in Dover, Kent, onboard a Border Security Command vessel following a small boat incident in the Channel(Image: © 2026 PA Media, All Rights Reserved)
“And that’s despite the Government shunting people from hotels into residential apartments to hide what is going on. Those apartments are then not available for young people struggling to get on the housing ladder.
“Most asylum seekers are illegal immigrants. Keir Starmer has let in more small boat illegal immigrants than any prime minster in history and numbers are 45% up since the election.
“The Conservative plan is to leave the ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights) so that illegal immigrants are deported within a week of arrival – not put up in hotels to apartments. But Labour is too weak to do that.”