Stradey Park: Why are hotels being used to house asylum seekers and is it the right solution?

This week's Wales This Week explores the concerns around whether hotels in Welsh communities should be used to house asylum seekers

For several communities in Wales, the difficult question of where best to accommodate asylum seekers has been brought close to home.

Residents of Furnace, near Llanelli, have been camped out alongside the Stradey Park hotel for a number of days, in anticipation of more than 200 asylum seekers moving into the hotel. 

Meanwhile, residents of Northop Hall are currently opposing plans submitted to Flintshire County Council to turn the village’s hotel into a hostel that will house more than 400 asylum seekers.

Both examples illustrate the friction caused between local communities and an asylum backlog heading toward the 200,000 mark.

What’s driving the need for hotels?

Immigration policy is not devolved to the Welsh Government. Instead, it is the responsibility of the UK Government’s Home Office.

That means that despite the Welsh Government declaring Wales as a Nation of Sanctuary, the number of asylum seekers who come to Wales, and where they are accommodated, are decisions for the Home Office.

The UK Government is currently facing a backlog of 172,758 people currently awaiting an initial decision on their asylum cases. Of those, 128,812 have been waiting longer than six months.

There are at least 7,638 asylum seekers living in Wales while their asylum applications are processed.

The vast majority live in Wales’ four ‘dispersal cities’ of Cardiff, Newport, Swansea and Wrexham.

However, with more than 12,000 people having already made asylum claims in the UK so far in 2023, accommodation is in short supply.

That means hotels have been used across the UK, despite opposition from a number of different communities.

Communities’ concerns

A number of people, communities and organisations have spoken out about their opposition to the idea of housing asylum seekers in hotels. 

At a local level, communities such as those at Furnace and Northop Hall, and their surrounding areas, have voiced concerns. 

In Furnace, around 100 people lost their jobs at the Stradey Park Hotel when it was closed to make way for asylum seekers in July. In Northop Hall, plans to accommodate more than 400 people at Northop Hall Country House Hotel would see the village’s population increase by around a quarter. Both communities also share concerns about local services, with transport, education and healthcare among those that could come under further strain. These anxieties are underpinned by concerns about how support for asylum seekers is funded.

For those dispersed into accommodation in the community - for example, those living in houses - councils receive £3,500 per person every three months to help mitigate the impact on services.

However, as hotels are considered temporary or short term options, councils do not receive those same support payments.

‘Not fit for purpose’

Concerns have also been raised by charities and organisations that support asylum seekers and refugees. 

The Welsh Refugee Coalition, a collection of organisations working with asylum seekers and refugees, oppose hotels as an option for accommodating asylum seekers. 

Salah Rasool, the coalition's chair, told ITV’s Wales This Week: “It is not a good way of respecting someone or asking them to integrate.

“I have been supporting somebody who has been in a hotel for the last 18 months. 

“That is shocking. It costs a lot of money from the public purse, and [impacts] that person’s mental health, because he has skills, he has something to contribute, but he is in a real terrible state. 

“We have thousands of people like him [across the UK].”Mr Rasool also has concerns about what impact placing hundreds of asylum seekers in small rural Welsh communities will have. 

“It is creating a massive problem for local people, because there aren’t charities [in these places] to help individuals,” he continued. 

“There is no specialist support and there are no qualified people to give proper advice.”

What is the UK Government and Home Office saying? The UK Government has said it is “clear that the use of hotels to house asylum seekers is unacceptable – there are currently more than 51,000 asylum seekers in hotels costing the UK taxpayer £6 million a day.

“The Home Office is committed to making every effort to reduce hotel use and limit the burden on the taxpayer.”

The Home Office is responsible for awarding contracts to companies that provide accommodation to asylum seekers.

Clearsprings Ready Homes are the only contractors appointed by the Home Office to run hotel based projects in Wales, in a contract worth £334 million over a ten year period.

Clearsprings, who have now taken over the Stradey Park Hotel, and also ran the controversial accommodation at the former military base at Penally in Pembrokeshire, refused to provide a comment to ITV Cymru Wales.

Is there a solution?

The UK Government says the way to tackle the issue is to reduce the number of asylum seekers coming to the UK. 

That is what has prompted the UK Government to create the Illegal Migration Bill, which contains measures designed to deter people from crossing the English channel by threatening them with either being returned to their home country or, controversially, to a third country such as Rwanda.

The deal to send migrants on a one-way trip to Rwanda has been mired in legal difficulties and is now due in the Supreme Court.

While such policies are delayed, the UK Government has introduced a fast track policy. It will see asylum seekers who have been waiting longer than a year for their applications to be processed, fill in a questionnaire, rather than attend an interview, so their claims can be dealt with more quickly. 

However, for those working in the refugee and asylum sector, reducing the number of people claiming asylum is not an option. 

Instead, organisations such as those in the Welsh Refugee Coalition would like to see the return of legal routes to claiming asylum, as well as extending programmes such as those offered to Ukrainian and Afghan refugees over the last couple of years. 

There are also calls for asylum seekers to be granted permission to work in the UK, in order to earn an income and reduce the burden on the taxpayer, and potentially fill staffing shortages in certain sectors.Watch Wales This Week: Room at the Inn? on ITV Cymru Wales at 8:30pm on Tuesday, July 18. Catch up afterwards online.