Keeping asylum seekers in hotels costs £3m a day

THE number of asylum seekers held in hotels has trebled to more than 26,000, at a cost to taxpayers of £3 million a day, according to the Refugee Council.

Figures obtained by the charity show there were 26,380 asylum seekers in temporary hotel accommodation at the end of 2021, up from 9,400 at the start of the year.

The number of hotels being used had doubled to 207 in the same period. More than 10,000 asylum seekers, including children, had been in their hotels for more than three months with 2,876 having spent between six months and a year, and 378 more than 12 months.

The bill, which is being paid by the Home Office, is £3million a day, on top of about £1.7million spent daily on hotels for 12,000 Afghan refugees.

This is despite the Government’s pledge to limit the use of hotels to host those in the asylum system, and its promise to move people into longerterm accommodation within 35 days.

Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, said: “The huge increase in the number of families and vulnerable children stuck between the four walls of a hotel room, from morning till night, is the brutal reality of a broken system.

“Far from the glitzy hotels people may imagine, these are not places anyone would want to stay in for long periods; they are cramped and unsafe.

“Hotel stays are days, weeks, months and in some cases a year, stuck in limbo, cut off from society, unable to find work with children often missing out on vital education.”

Of the 26,400 people in hotels, around one in 10 (2,569) was a child.

The Refugee Council said there was evidence of some refugees going missing, particularly from Albanian and Vietnamese backgrounds.

Both communities are susceptible to traffickers offering work in the UK on drug farms and, predominantly for Vietnamese women, in high street nail bars.

The council recommended that the Government should commit to meeting the 35-day limit on the time spent in hotels and increase support for asylum seekers, including a cash allowance to all those in hotels so that they can buy essentials, including healthy food.