Leyland Hotel to close to asylum seekers

A Central Lancashire hotel that has been used as accommodation for asylum seekers for almost five years will be vacated by the end of December.

The Leyland Hotel, on Leyland Way, was one of more than 400 facilities previously taken over by government contractors to house people while their applications for asylum were being processed.

The 93-room venue – officially known as the Preston Leyland Hotel – closed to the public in April 2022. The LDRS has seen government correspondence which says it will stop being used as an asylum facility “before the end of the year”.

South Ribble’s MP Paul Foster said had been assured by the Home Office that those currently living in the hotel would be moved to “proper asylum facilities” – and not dispersed into houses of multiple occupation (HMOs) locally. He previously revealed that the site had been used to accommodate families and single mothers, not lone males.

The Labour politician last year urged the government to set a timetable for the closure of the asylum centre in his constituency, which – in its previous guise – was one of the of the few hotels in the Leyland area and also a popular wedding venue.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service has approached the hotel’s operator, Best Western, for comment on when it might reopen to the public.

In response to a date being set for its current occupants to be relocated, Mr. Foster said the move would be better both for them and the local visitor economy.

“We’ve been working tirelessly behind the scenes with the Home Office with a view to getting this hotel back into public use.

“My view has always been that the hotel wasn’t right for the asylum-seeking families – and it wasn’t right for the local community.

“It’s right next to the M6, with next-to-no facilities for any of [those] that have been housed there. Moving them to a proper asylum reception facility [means] they’ll get far more support from government agencies.

“[Meanwhile], we can get the hotel back into public use for the people of Leyland, South Ribble and Lancashire to enjoy.

“But [I want] to make it clear – before the rumours start – that [the existing occupants] are not going into HMOs, they’re going back to proper asylum facilities that now have capacity,” said Mr. Foster, who has previously stressed that he is not opposed to asylum applicants, but wants them housed in appropriate accommodation.

He said he would now be seeking an “urgent meeting” with senior management at the Leyland Hotel to understand when the facility may be opened up to the public again.

The government letter seen by the LDRS states that occupants will be “relocated to other parts of our asylum estate”, having been given a minimum of five days’ notice of their new residence.

The number of so-called ‘asylum hotels’ peaked at 402 under the last Conservative government in the summer of 2023 – at a reported cost of more than £9m a day – as the Home Office struggled to deal with a backlog of asylum applications.

That figure had almost halved by the time of the general election in July 2024 and, as of the end of June this year, stood at 160. At that point, just over 16,000 people were being housed in hotels, down from a high of more than 56,000 in September 2023.

The current Labour administration has promised to end the use of hotels for asylum seekers, announcing this summer that discussions had begun over the potential use of three former Ministry of Defence sites and an intention to extend the use of two others already in operation.

In August, the Metropole Hotel in Blackpool, which had been used for asylum seekers since 2021, also closed for that purpose.