Hotel owners are approached to hand over their properties to outsourced companies, which run the business on behalf of the Home Office.
Three large firms have contracts to run the hotels.
One, Serco, provides some 109 hotels in England, according to a High Court judgement from December 2022, mostly in the Midlands, East and North West.
Serco, which also provides other services on behalf of the government, references “growth” in its immigration work in its 2022 annual report.
Court documents have revealed Mears Group is running 80 hotels in north-east England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. According to its annual report, the company increased its annual revenue by 22% in 2021.
The report said the increase was “largely driven” by its work finding hotel accommodation for asylum seekers.
Home Office spending records show a smaller firm, Calder Conferences, received £20.6m in payments from the Home Office in 2021 to book hotels. That figure increased to £97m in 2022.
Home Office sources suggested this work related principally to finding bridging hotels for Afghan refugees who arrived following the Taliban takeover in 2021.
Leeds-based Calder’s annual accounts for the year ending February 2022 show turnover increased from £5.98m to £23.66m. The firm’s pre-tax profits trebled, from £2.1m to £6.3m.
Calder’s director, Debbie Hoban, saw her annual remuneration increase from £230,000 to £2.2m. Her public Facebook profile shows a series of lavish holidays over the years. Her twitter account has been deleted.
The firm has not responded to requests for comment.
Unity News Network (UNN) Staff Writer | To find out more details about our staff, please head to the About Us section on our website.
