"The Home Office [UK’s Interior Ministry] has taken action to remove Stay Belvedere Hotels (SBHL) from government asylum accommodation operations," reads a statement from the Home Office and sent to InfoMigrants on March 25.

According to the Home Office, the company is responsible for running 51 hotel properties for asylum seekers across England and Wales, including Napier Barracks in Kent, which has been surrounded by allegations of poor conditions.

Five days ago, the Home Office announced that it was due to close Napier Barracks in September this year. The contract with SBHL will be terminated in September 2026. A Home Office spokesperson explained to InfoMigrants that this is because SBHL is a subcontractor through a company Clearsprings, which has a contract with SBHL that lasts until September 2026. The contracts were established under the previous government in 2019.

Napier Barracks

Napier Barracks was singled out several times for criticism by the government’s Inspectorate of Prisons in 2020 and 2021 as well as NGOs and bodies working with migrants in the UK. Asylum seekers housed there at the time reported 'prison-like' conditions.

The Home Office said in a statement that a decision to terminate the SBHL contract "follows a review of all contracts across the asylum estate." The statement added that the Home Office had examined all of its "contract and contractual arrangements," and had identified "concerns about [SBHL’s] performance and behavior as a government supplier."

The government added that "the safety and security of people working and staying in temporary accommodation is a government priority, together with ensuring value for money for the taxpayer."

The Home Office said that it had been working carefully over the past weeks "to put robust plans in place to ensure asylum services continue operating as normal during this transition with as little disruption to asylum seekers and staff as possible."

Read AlsoUK: Asylum seekers report 'prison-like' conditions, abuse

Government claims 'more oversight of our suppliers'

Britain’s Minister for Border Security and Asylum, Angela Eagle commented: "Since July [when the current Labour government took over from the previous Conservative government], we have improved contract management and added more oversight of our suppliers of asylum accommodation."

Eagle said that after making the decision to remove SBHL from the Home Office supply chain, her department would "not hesitate to take further action to ensure Home Office contracts deliver for the UK."

The Home Office has committed to ending the use of asylum hotels in general but has not yet given a date when that will happen. The Home Office underlined that the earliest point they can exit the contract regarding SBHL is in September 2026.

2024: NAO found costs of large sites more expensive than hotels

In March 2024 Britain’s National Audit Office (NAO), the independent body that assesses government spending in the UK, published an audit on asylum accommodation and the respective contracts. The report was "prepared in response to public and parliamentary concerns about the Home Office’s plans to accommodate people seeking asylum," states the NAO in its introduction.

At the time, under the previous government, costs for accommodating asylum seekers in hotels and in large sites were rising along with the number of asylum seekers entering the country, and the Conservative government pledged to reduce the use of hotels and try and make cost savings by moving people to large sites, often located on ex-military bases and in former barracks.

The report looked at the Home Office's efforts at the time to reduce hotel use, the costs and expected savings from using the large sites, and future plans.

The report was not about assessing the quality of accommodation, or to conclude on the value of money of the Home Office’s procurement and management of asylum accommodation. However, in the summary of findings, the NAO pointed out that the Home Office had incurred losses of at least 3.4 million pounds (around 4 million euros) trying to develop larger sites it eventually wasn’t able to use for various reasons.

The report also found that the Home Office's analysis suggests that large sites would actually cost more than hotels.

Read AlsoUK asylum system under scrutiny for severe housing failures

NAO: Previous government 'prioritized speed' to award contracts

The NAO audit found that in order to meet an ambitious accommodation timetable, the former government had "prioritized speed" over the way it awarded contracts "over generating competition." This seems to have been the case, according to the report, with Clearsprings, that the Home Office confirmed is subcontracting to SBHL.

According to the NAO report published last year, the former government "awarded contracts to suppliers worth 254 million pounds in total (about 304 million euros), of which 244 million (about 292 million euros) was awarded without a full competitive process." One of those contractors, according to the report, was Clearsprings, another was Serco. The report states the Home Office increased the Clearsprings contract value by 101 million pounds (about 120 million euros).

InfoMigrants also contacted SBHL regarding the termination of the contract. They responded via email, saying: "SBHL has been informed of the decision to end its contract to supply temporary accommodation to asylum seekers in the UK and is in the process of holding discussions with appropriate partners."

Read AlsoUK: Last asylum seekers moved off controversial barge

Transfer of contract to company that managed Bibby Stockholm

On the company's website, SBHL says it has teams "recruited and trained to deliver bespoke guest services that don’t just meet, but exceed the expectations of our clients." They add that their company had become "a leading provider of the UK Government's provision of temporary accommodation for those seeking asylum in the UK."

The company says it works "in partnership with central and local government," as well as "community groups, voluntary organizations and charities that operate across communities." They say they strive to make sure "each guest is welcomed, supported and serviced in a way that connects them with communities, is sensitive to their culture and delivers an experience that is both compassionate and caring."

The left-leaning Guardian newspaper and the right-leaning Times newspaper have both reported that the contract will instead be handed to the company that ran the Bibby Stockholm barge in Dorset, an Australia-based firm called Corporate Travel Management (CTM).

CTM has also been criticized for its management of the barge, which ended up costing more than housing people in hotels in the first place, partly because it took months before the barge was fully operational, and even when it was, it was never totally full.

The Guardian says that Clearsprings is "one of three companies that have contracts with the Home Office" to provide asylum seeker accommodation. Accommodation run by SBHL came in for criticism in February 2021, after a joint investigation conducted by the Observer newspaper and ITV (Independent Television) in the UK revealed allegations of sexual harassment and intimidation at SBHL-run properties.

Read Also Women asylum seekers in UK hotels dehumanized and sexually harassed – report

Allegations of sexual abuse in UK asylum seeker accommodation

The Observer newspaper published another series of allegations about unnamed asylum seeker accommodation in the UK on Sunday (March 23). In the report, women and girls alleged they were raped, sexually assaulted and harassed after being place in mixed Home Office accommodation.

InfoMigrants asked the Home Office whether termination of SBHL’s contract had anything to do with these allegations, or whether they ran any of the unnamed properties mentioned in the report. A Home Office spokesperson said on the phone that the decision to terminate was not to do with safeguarding or related to the allegations in the Observer report.

One of the hotels where abuse was alleged to have occurred has since been closed, reported the Observer. The Home Office told the newspaper that it was investigating the allegations and was "extremely concerned" about the case.

Charities supporting some of the women making these allegations, like Rape Crisis, have called on the Home Office to take "urgent action," reported the Observer, and tackle what they described as "systemic failures to protect women and children from sexual violence in asylum accommodation."

Sarah Collier, a human rights solicitor at the legal firm Irwin Mitchell, reportedly told the Observer that her firm had seen a lot "of issues with women in asylum accommodation," including cases of people who had already been victims of sexual abuse in their home countries or on their journey being placed in mixed accommodation, reported the newspaper.

The charity Women for Refugee Women reportedly told the Observer that a recent survey they conducted found almost a quarter of women reported being subjected to sexual harassment or abuse from another hotel resident in asylum seeker accommodation and about 12 percent said that abuse had originated from hotel staff.

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Government committed to ending use of hotels, but no end-date set

The Home Office reportedly told the Observer that some of the incidents mentioned in the investigation allegedly took place in 2022, but that they were committed to "thoroughly investigat[ing] any other reports that are passed to us, together with our contracted accommodation providers."

It repeated it was committed to ending the use of asylum seeker hotels, "as part of our wider effort to restore order to the asylum system."

InfoMigrants asked the Home Office some follow-up questions about the decision to terminate SBHL's contract, but at time of publication, has not yet received a reply.

However, the BBC applied for a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the Home Office about the number of hotels currently being used to accommodate asylum seekers in the UK which established that last June, during the General Election campaign, there were 213 hotels being used to accommodate asylum seekers in Britain. That number fell after Labour took power, but climbed slightly again in December 2024 to 218.

The BBC also established that at the end of 2024, there were 112,187 asylum seekers being supported in the UK. 38,079 (34 percent) were in hotel accommodation. That figure is 32 percent lower than the peak of 56,042 at the end of September 2023.