This report looked into the experiences of people seeking asylum living in hotel accommodation in England and it is a follow-up on our research report on the same topic from last year.

The report identified a range of problems and challenges as a result of insufficient support provided in asylum hotels. It provides an update on the situation for people living in hotels, with new information and evidence from our services, the internal MEL project which we set up at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as two Freedom of Information Requests (FOIs) giving us a rich source of data and information.

Unfortunately, a year on, the report findings confirm that people seeking asylum continue to experience significant issues whilst living in hotel accommodation, facing barriers and delays when they raise problems with relevant authorities. It is of huge concern that the scale of the problems is now significantly greater, as the hotel population almost tripled over the course of 2021 with 26,380 people accommodated in hotels across the UK at the end of 2021.