The British government’s contentious scheme to house asylum seekers in hotels across the country has seen the cost of housing individual alleged asylum seekers soar by over a third since last year.
While the Labour government has committed to ending the Tory-era hotel migrant scheme, which has sparked national controversy and backlash from locals over concerns about the often military-age males being placed in hotels in their midst with little to no supervision, challenges continue to emerge while transitioning to other schemes.
According to government data presented by Home Office minister Anna Turley to the Home Affairs Committee, taxpayers were shelling out an average of £199 per night to house migrants in hotel rooms as of April. This was a 37 per cent increase from last October, when the same scheme cost £144.98 per migrant.
It means that taxpayers are currently being charged £1,393 every week to provide free hotel accommodation to supposed asylum seekers, GB News reported.
As of the end of June, the government was housing 16,021 migrants in hotels. This was down from 36,273 last September and from the peak of 56,018 logged in 2023. The number of hotels has also fallen from 200 last September to 160 in June of this year.
Minister Turley said the drop in hotel occupancy drove the sharp rise in cost per head, adding that hotels were charging the government for unoccupied rooms.
“This figure has increased since the figures we last provided in October 2025, as hotel closures are being implemented in phases,” she told the Commons.
“As occupancy falls ahead of full site closure, the department continues to incur costs for some unoccupied rooms, which increases the average cost per person accommodated.”
The admission comes amid increasing controversy over the government’s plans to further reduce the use of migrant hotels, including the conversion of former military sites into large-scale migrant camps, as the government vowed to shift some of the burden of asylum accommodation onto middle-class areas.
Such plans have sparked significant backlash from locals, such as at the former Bicester Garrison outside the leafy (and liberal) village of Piddington, where the government has planned to house some 1,256 young male migrants, who will be free to roam around the Oxfordshire village of just 350 residents.
The local discontent over the issue was so strong that the village held a referendum on seceding from the United Kingdom. The measure was passed with 92 per cent of the vote with 285 votes in favour compared to just 26 opposed.
Piddington Parish Council leader Tim McNally even suggested that they may petition to become the next state of America, saying in July: “We want President Trump to know about this.”
Meanwhile, the government is also looking to house supposed asylum seekers in so-called Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs), where three or more people share a residential property. Opponents have warned that this would further drive up the cost of housing and remove the ability of local residents to know where the migrants are located.
As of June, some 73,068 asylum seekers were being housed at taxpayer expense in non-hotel accommodations.
A Home Office spokesman said: “The Government is closing every asylum hotel, saving taxpayers over £1 billion on asylum support since the election.
“Numbers in asylum hotels have been slashed by 50 per cent in the last year and 71 per cent since the peak in September 2023. We are working to fairly house asylum seekers across the country, moving asylum seekers into alternative accommodation, including former military sites which are designed to be self-contained to reduce impact on the local community.”
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