Luxury mansions handed over to migrants will be closed first under Government crackdown

Luxury mansions handed over to migrants are to be targeted for closure first under a crackdown on asylum hotels to be announced by the Government this week.

Robert Jenrick, the Immigration Minister, aims to slash the number of hotels being used to house asylum seekers by around 100 within five months.

He is expected to announce on Tuesday the closure of the first 50 by the end of January with more to follow in the subsequent two months.

The move aims to reduce the current £8 million a day bill for some 400 hotels to save hundreds of millions a year in the cost of accommodation.

About 51,000 migrants are being housed in around 400 hotels across England and Wales, which has prompted fury from Tory backbenchers, particularly in Red Wall constituencies such as Stoke, Mansfield, Wigan and Blackpool.

The first to be closed to migrants will be the four-star hotels which have included Victorian stately homes, country houses and luxury flats.

Among them is Stoke Rochford Hall, a hotel and golf resort, set in acres of rolling Lincolnshire countryside and described in its brochure as “a luxury Victorian country mansion, set within beautiful formal landscaped gardens... the perfect place to enjoy life with our exceptional hospitality, cuisine and facilities”.

It hosted the Duke and Duchess of Sussex when they attended the wedding of Harry’s cousin Lady Celia McCorquodale in 2018. The estate was the ancestral seat of her father Neil McCorquodale, an uncle to William and Harry, whose wife is Princess Diana’s sister, Lady Sarah McCorquodale.

Others hired by the Home Office included the four-star Tudor-style Great Hallingbury Manor in Essex and four-star Kilhey Court, a Victorian country house hotel with spa overlooking Worthing lakes in Wigan.

The closures will see asylum seekers moved to larger accommodation sites including the Bibby Stockholm barge in Portland, Dorset, and two disused RAF bases - RAF Wethersfield in Essex and RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire - which have been converted into large scale asylum camps for 4,200 migrants.

Ministers have been able to reduce the number of hotels as a result of the fall in migrant crossings, which are down 30 per cent on last year

The reduction in hotels stems from the decline in the number of migrants crossing the Channel. So far, 26,200 have reached the UK in small boats this year, compared with 37,600 at the same point last year. It means that the numbers are on course to be 15,000 lower than the record 47,755 last year.

Ministers also attribute the move to a policy of forcing thousands of asylum seekers to share hotel rooms as part of efforts to drive down costs. When the policy was launched, it was expected to save £250 million this year.

It has also been helped by a sharp increase in the number of asylum applications being processed by the Home Office and the 25 per cent fall in the number of migrants crossing the Channel.

Mr Jenrick said the backlog of asylum cases was “falling rapidly,” reducing the need for hotels to house them. “When I became minister with the Home Office, we were making 400 asylum decisions a week. We’re now making 4,500 asylum decisions a week,” he said.

The latest figures show the backlog of 92,000 cases pre-dating June 2022, which Rishi Sunak pledged to clear by the end of this year, is down to around 55,000.

Ministers will hail the move as evidence that the Government is beginning to win the battle to stop the boats although much will hinge on the supreme court judgement, due in December, on the legality of the plans to deport migrants to Rwanda to claim asylum there.

The Rwanda policy is seen as critical to deterring migrants from making the crossings although Government insiders are “pessimistic” about the prospects of winning the case. It was reported at the weekend that officials believed it was 60-40 against victory in the judgement.

Failure to win the case is likely to spark demands within Cabinet and among backbenchers on the right of the party to quit the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).