Sue Mitchell File on 4 Investigates
All names have been changed to protect the identities of hotel residents and staff
As I eat a meal cooked on the floor of a shower, I realise nothing has prepared me for what life is like for the residents of an asylum hotel.
I have been invited to join Kadir and his family for dinner – not in the hotel restaurant, but up in the rooms where he lives with his wife, Mira, and their three children.
An electric cable, covered in thick insulating tape, has been extended into the bathroom. Behind the door, Mira is crouching over a small cooker in the shower tray. Pans are precariously placed on a hob and she is stirring away.
As a pan full of oil starts to spit, I worry about the smoke alarm, but I needn’t bother. The sensor in the room has been sealed tight with plastic bags.
This set-up is illegal and unsafe, but Kadir tells me his family would rather take the risk and make their own meals, than settle for the free hotel restaurant fare provided.
He dismisses that as “chips and chicken nuggets” and says hotel residents have complained it makes them feel ill.
The smell of herbs and spices wafting through the corridors seems to suggest they are not the only ones who feel this way.
“Everybody, they’re cooking in their rooms like this,” claims Kadir. “We all do it, but we do it undercover.”
I visited four hotels this summer for File on 4 Investigates to try to get an impression of what life was like for those living and working there.
Two sites accommodated families, and the others were for single people – most of them men. But the stories in all four places – snapshots in time – were similar.
To protect the safety of residents and staff, I am not saying where the hotels are.
I heard from families who have been waiting in the UK for nearly a decade for their cases to be decided – and from people who have had babies in the misguided belief that doing so will automatically guarantee mother and child being given British passports.
There were uplifting stories of human spirit – including an elderly couple, both with serious health problems, who still managed to help others in their hotel with food and emotional support.
But, at the same time, I have seen signs of hotel residents working illegally in the black economy and discovered that the asylum system appears to require an extraordinary number of taxi journeys.
The government has pledged to end the use of asylum hotels by 2029. They currently house about 32,000 people across the UK, down from 51,000 in 2023.
Asylum hotels – including two of those I visited – have become a focus for vocal and sometimes violent protests this summer, after a resident of one hotel in Epping, Essex, sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl.
Journalists aren’t normally allowed inside the hotels, but I gained access through migrant contacts who had made the journey across the English Channel from France.
The hotels were never intended to be used like this. The rooms look smart on review sites on the internet – with sofas, televisions, double beds, ensuite bathrooms. Everything is there, and you would be pleased if one was yours for a couple of nights.
What the pictures don’t show is the wear-and-tear and the build-up of possessions that come from continuous occupancy over months and years.
Where reception once was, there are now security desks. Outside, there are bollards and warnings that the public aren’t allowed in.
At the hotels housing families, I am struck by the number of prams in the reception areas, and by how many babies and toddlers there are. With little or no communal space, younger children are left to play in empty corridors.
In one of the hotels, a friendly security guard, Curtis, shows me a makeshift running track he has set up for the children in an unused car park – and the bikes in the storeroom he has found and repaired.
When I ask the Home Office how many children have been born in asylum hotels, it tells me there are no figures available.
One of the first babies I meet is proudly held aloft by his father – they arrived from Somalia just weeks earlier and he tells me this is a “British baby”, born on “British soil”, who will, one day he believes, hold a British passport.
This is not, in fact, the case. The Home Office can still deport asylum seekers who have babies in the UK, although, according to Jon Featonby of the Refugee Council, there are extra safeguards which make it harder to forcibly remove them.
Kadir and Mira – the couple who cooked me a meal – have also had a baby since being in the UK. Kadir says he, his wife and their two older children were forced to flee Iraq. In his home country, Kadir says he had worked as a translator but was targeted by criminals.
The family has been moved between different hotels all over the UK since they arrived nine years ago. The Home Office initially rejected Kadir’s case because of what it said was lack of proof. Two unsuccessful appeals followed. A third is currently under way.
The family occupies two adjoining hotel rooms – one for Kadir, Mira and their baby, and the other for their 12-year-old daughter, Shayan, and 14-year-old son, Roman.
Kadir says he wants to work, but won’t do so illegally. However, he says he knows plenty of hotel residents who seek to supplement the £9.95 a week they receive from the government.
Kadir introduces me to Mohammed, who arrived from Afghanistan a few weeks ago.
Mohammed fixed up a job before he even hit UK soil, he says, as his cousin was already here and working illegally. He is now earning £20 a day for shifts that he says can last 10 hours, sometimes longer.
When I challenge Mohammed on why he is breaking the law, he says he has no choice because his family owes money to people-smugglers. It is a story I hear from other asylum seekers too.
Mohammed wants to send money back to his wife in the hope that one day – if he is allowed to remain in the UK – she will be able to join him.
In all four migrant hotels I visit, there are men and women coming and going at times that suggest they are working. Sometimes, delivery bikes are parked around the side of the buildings and occasionally vans pick people up.
In July, the Home Office conducted a UK-wide crackdown on illegal delivery drivers. It says 1,780 individuals were stopped and spoken to, leading to 280 arrests for illegal working activity. A total of 53 people are now having their support reviewed as a result.
Staff in the hotel tell me it isn’t their job to check these things, but security guard Curtis says he is not surprised. “You’ve got nothing to occupy these guys. So of course, they’re going to go out there and work.”
There seems to be a constant stream of cabs arriving and leaving the four sites I visit – although the Home Office says it doesn’t have figures for the amount of money it spends on taxis at asylum hotels.
While residents are issued with a bus pass for one return journey per week, for any other necessary travel – for example, a visit to the doctor – taxis are called.
Proof of an upcoming appointment needs to be shown at the reception desk, where a taxi is booked on an automated system. Public transport or walking is not presented as an option.
This can result in some unusually long journeys and others that are unusually short.
For instance, when migrants move between hotels, they sometimes keep the same NHS doctors – especially for GP referrals. Kadir says a knee problem meant he was told to take a 250-mile taxi ride to see the consultant who had treated him at his old address. He says the taxi driver told him the return journey cost £600.
“Should the Home Office give me the ticket for the train? This is the easy way, and they know they spend too much money,” Kadir says. “We know as well, but we don’t have any choice. It’s crazy.”
I accompany Mira and Shayan as they go for a walk to a local chemist to pick up a prescription. It means braving a line of protesters shouting “Go home!” at them. They keep their heads down as police escort them through.
Later, I ask 12-year-old Shayan how she feels about the protests.
She says she wants to engage with the protesters and is frustrated the hotel staff won’t allow her: “Me and my friends have always wanted to go up to them and speak to them face-to-face. What is their problem with the kids as well?”
Shayan and her brother say they are often reluctant to take the school bus that comes to collect them each weekday. “You never know what [the protesters] will do to the bus,” she says, adding that she is afraid one of them might try to board it.
She wants to stay in the UK, she says, but her life so far has been spent in uncertain circumstances: “Once we get settled in a place, then they move us, and then we’ve got to learn where we come from, like, learn that area, go to a new school, make new friends, and then once we’ve done that, they move us again.”
Since talking to me at the asylum hotel, Kadir and his family have been told they are to be moved on once more – to two hotels in different cities. Kadir and his baby daughter have been offered accommodation in one hotel, and Mira, Shayan and Roman in another, nearly 200 miles away.
But they are refusing to go. Kadir has already been told he has lost his weekly benefit and there is a chance the family will be deemed to have made themselves intentionally homeless.
The future for the family – like many other asylum seekers – remains anything but certain.
