Migrants to be forced out of luxury mansions used as hotels and put in hostels
Migrants will be moved from country-manor hotelsand into shared hostels in days as the government aims to cut costs on accommodation.
The bill for migrant accommodation currently sits at £8million a day for around 400 hotels across the UK – with the move expected to save the government £500million a year.
Some of the buildings currently used include four-star hotels, with the use of them for migrants causing outrage in some local communities.
These luxury mansions are first to be targeted in the crackdown by Robert Jenrick, the Immigration Minister, who reportedly aims to slash the number of hotels being used to house asylum seekers by around 100 within five months.
In the commons today, he confirmed this would start “in the coming days” and “will be complete” by end of January.
Migrants will be taken out of 50 of the more expensive hotels by January, with another 50 expected to come off the list by March.
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They will be more likely to have to share rooms in the new accommodation. “We are getting the most egregious examples of luxurious hotels off our books first,” a government source told the Mail Online.
“The country manor houses and the stately home-style properties will be the first to go. We’ve been very clear that we can’t let this drag on any more. It’s been a complete disgrace.”
The luxury mansions currently being used includes the “Downton Abbey-style” Stoke Rochford Hall, a hotel and golf resort in Lincolnshire – described by its brochure as “a luxury Victorian country mansion, set within beautiful formal landscaped gardens”.
The incredible building hosted the Duke and Duchess of Sussex when they attended the wedding of Harry’s cousin Lady Celia McCorquodale in 2018, and was the ancestral seat of her father Neil McCorquodale, an uncle to William and Harry.
MP Sir Edward Leigh described the hotel’s use by the Home Office as a “farce”.
Migrants will be moved from this mansion and others – including four-star Tudor-style Great Hallingbury Manor in Essex and four-star Kilhey Court – to larger centres such as the Bibby Stockholm barge in Portland, Dorset.
The enormous barge reopened for migrants last week, after 39 migrants were removed in August amid legionella bacteria fears.
Two disused RAF bases – RAF Wethersfield in Essex and RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire – have also been converted into large scale asylum camps for 4,200 migrants.
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The Home Office believes the numbers of small-boat Channel crossings are beginning to slow.
A total of 26,116 have been brought ashore since the start of 2023, which compares with 37,575 by this point last year – a fall of around 30 percent.
The Home Office announced on Friday that an annual cap on the number of refugees accepted in the UK would be launched in January 2025.
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