Home Office to review use of South Yorkshire hotel as asylum seeker accommodation

Officials will undertake the review in April.

The Home Office is set to review the use of a Manvers hotel as accommodation for asylum seekers.

Last year, 130 asylum seekers were moved from the Ibis in Bramley to the Holiday Inn hotel in Manvers.

John Healey, MP for Wentworth and Dearne, stated that the Home Office extended the contract with the Holiday Inn at Manvers until October 2023.

Mr Healey previously told the Home Office of his ‘disappointment and frustration’ in the way the decision was made, which he states was ‘without prior notice or consultation with Rotherham Council, public services or local residents”

Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick MP has now agreed to a sixth-month review of the Home Office’s decision to use the hotel as accommodation for asylum seekers, alongside an assessment of the Government’s wider asylum accommodation needs.

Mr Healey said: “I’m pleased that the Minister has finally agreed to review the use of the Holiday Inn at Manvers as an asylum hotel.

“I will make a formal submission to Robert Jenrick as part of this review, when I will again set out our local concerns about Manvers being utterly unsuited for such accommodation and our wish to see our hotel being released back for ordinary paying customers.

“I want to try to hold the Home Office to their word last March when they said this would be a ‘temporary’ use.”

In his response to Mr Healey, Mr Jenrick stated that the Home office is ‘oing all we can to stop the use of hotels’, including bringing forward the use of alternative accommodation such as surplus military sites.

‘We have already identified locations that could accommodate
10,000 people and are in active discussions to secure these and more. Our aim is to add thousands of places through this type of accommodation in the coming months, at half the cost of hotels,’ adds the letter.