The UK government announced it is considering the use of more former military sites to reduce reliance on hotels as accommodations for asylum seekers, the BBC reported on Sunday, September 7. 

Defense Secretary John Healey confirmed discussions are underway with military planners and the Home Office to identify additional "military and non-military" temporary sites to house asylum seekers. In addition, Healy confirmed that the government was also exploring other types of "non-military" accommodation.

Newly appointed Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is expected to unveil plans within weeks to further move asylum seekers to military land, as the government ramps up efforts to phase out hotel accommodations for asylum seekers.

Currently, RAF Wethersfield in Essex and Napier Barracks in Kent are being used to house asylum seekers.

Gradually, the government wants to end the use of hotels for asylum seekers, which has sparked heated demonstrations.

Anti-migrant protests erupted across the country in July after an asylum seeker housed at the Bell Hotel in Epping was reportedly charged with sexual assault. The picket lines rapidly spread to cities including London, Bristol, Liverpool, and beyond, with demonstrators usually gathering outside hotels known to house asylum seekers.

The protests have not let up since then. The local newspaper The Times reported that on Sunday, protestors outside the Cladhan Hotel in Falkirk brandished a white supremacist slogan. Anti-racism groups were also present in a counter-protest.

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Heavy reliance on hotels

Currently, there are an estimated 32,000 asylum seekers housed in hotels.  

A recent study by the Migration Observatory, a think tank based at the University of Oxford,  revealed how the UK’s asylum accommodation system has shifted dramatically in recent years, with hotels becoming a central temporary housing solution for asylum seekers despite their prohibitive costs.  

Traditionally, asylum seekers had been placed in long-term private rental housing, but from 2020 onward, the government increasingly turned to hotels to cope with a ballooning backlog of asylum applications and a shortage of permanent housing.  

While hotel use has fallen in most regions since 2023, London has bucked the trend. Between 2018 and 2024, more people seeking international protection were concentrated in London, the South East, and the East of England. This marked a departure from the original dispersal policy designed to allocate the number of asylum seekers more evenly across the UK.  

According to the study, these areas with the highest rates of asylum seekers are also among those with the highest reliance on hotels.  

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Prohibitive costs

The Migration Observatory also examined the cost implications, which indicated that in 2024-25, hotels were on average six times more expensive than other forms of accommodation.

The government has managed to level off costs slightly by increasing occupancy rates, meaning they housed more people per hotel. This slashed the average nightly rate from 162 British pounds (187 euros) in March 2023 to 119 British pounds (137 euros) by March 2025, but the scale of hotel dependence remains high.

Compared to other European countries, the UK stands out for its heavy reliance on hotels and private contractors to house asylum seekers. Critics have slammed the strategy as both financially unsustainable and socially divisive. 

The government is also planning asylum policy reforms, which include creating an independent body of adjudicators would be created to handle asylum appeals and reduce the backlog of more than 100,000 asylum cases, including an estimated 51,000 appeals.

Labour wants to accelerate its plan to end the use of hotels, which have become a focal point for anti-migrant protests. 

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Record high crossing  

The number of people crossing the English Channel in small boats has surged past 30,000 this year.

Home Office figures show that 1,097 migrants arrived in 17 boats on Saturday alone, pushing the total for 2025 to 30,100. The pace marks a sharp increase on previous years: arrivals are up 37 percent compared with this stage in 2024, when 22,028 people had made the journey, and 37 percent higher than in 2023, when 21,918 had arrived by early September. 

The record-breaking figures come despite government pledges to curb the dangerous crossings and ongoing attempts to dismantle people smuggling networks. Newly appointed Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood condemned the rising numbers as "utterly unacceptable."

Mahmood insisted that migrant returns to France would begin "imminently," citing a bilateral agreement struck last month aimed at tightening cooperation across the Channel. 

Apart from France, the UK has also signed a deal with the government of Iraq last month, which aims to introduce a formal process to return Iraqi nationals who have arrived in the UK with no prior permission to stay in the UK to their country.

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