Asylum seeker hotel to close 'by end of year'

A hotel in Leyland will stop housing asylum seekers "by the end of the year".

The Leyland Hotel, on Leyland Way, in Lancashire, was one of more than 400 facilities previously taken over by government contractors to house people while their applications for asylum were being processed.

The 93-room venue - officially known as the Preston Leyland Hotel - closed to the public in April 2022.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS ) has seen government correspondence which says it will stop being used as an asylum facility "before the end of the year".

South Ribble MP Paul Foster said had been assured by the Home Office that those currently living in the hotel would be moved to "proper asylum facilities" and not dispersed into houses of multiple occupation (HMOs) locally.

He previously revealed that the site had been used to accommodate families and single mothers.

The Labour politician last year urged the government to set a timetable for the closure of the asylum centre in his constituency.

He said he would now be seeking an "urgent meeting" with senior management at the Leyland Hotel to understand when the facility may be opened up to the public again.

It was one of the of the few hotels in the Leyland area and also a popular wedding venue.

The government letter seen by the LDRS states that the asylum seekers will be "relocated to other parts of our asylum estate", having been given a minimum of five days' notice of their new residence.

The number of so-called asylum hotels peaked at 402 in the summer of 2023, under the last Conservative government.

They cost a reported £9m a day.

That figure had almost halved by the time of the general election in July 2024 and, as of the end of June this year, stood at 160.

At that point, just over 16,000 people were being housed in hotels, down from a high of more than 56,000 in September 2023.

The current Labour administration has promised to end the use of hotels for asylum seekers, announcing this summer that discussions had begun over the potential use of three former Ministry of Defence sites and an intention to extend the use of two others already in operation.

In August, the Metropole Hotel in Blackpool, which had been used for asylum seekers since 2021, also closed for that purpose.

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