The Home Office has sacked one of the firms responsible for putting asylum seekers in hotels after raising “concerns”. The Government employs private contractors to find housing for asylum seekers but, in a sign of the continuing chaos in the UK’s immigration, the Home Office announced it was ending its contract with Stay Belvedere Hotels. The firm houses people waiting for asylum decisions in 51 hotels in England and Wales, as well as the Napier Barracks in Folkestone, Kent.

A statement from the Home Office said the contract, awarded in 2019, will end at the earliest opportunity in September 2026 after a review of all contracts to provide asylum accommodation raised concerns about the company’s performance and behaviour. The statement said the safety and security of people staying and working in temporary accommodation was a government priority, as well as ensuring value for money.

Minister for border security and asylum Angela Eagle said: “Since July, we have improved contract management and added more oversight of our suppliers of asylum accommodation.

“We have made the decision to remove Stay Belvedere Hotels from the Home Office supply chain and will not hesitate to take further action to ensure Home Office contracts deliver for the UK.”

The Home Office, which is committed to ending the use of asylum hotels, said it was working to “put robust plans in place” to minimise disruption.

Stay Belvedere Hotels has been invited to comment.

Meanwhile, the Labour housing minister has refused to say when the use of hotels for asylum seekers will end. Asked when the numbers would go down, Matthew Pennycook told Times Radio: “The Tories gave up on processing asylum claims, decision-making in the asylum processing system collapsed by 70%, so we have a huge backlog and if we are going to work through that backlog … then we have got to deal with that problem in the short term.

“I’m not going to give you a timeline today on when the use of hotels will end.”

The housing minister said he would not provide “the specifics” of why the Home Office cancelled a company’s contract to provide accommodation for asylum seekers but that “operational details are being worked out”.

Asked why the decision had been taken to remove Stay Belvedere Hotels from the Home Office supply chain, Mr Pennycook told Times Radio: “I’m not going into the specifics of the decision that the Home Office ministers have made.”

Asked whether the Government would get money back if the company had failed in its duty, he said: “The whole purpose of reviewing asylum contracts is to improve the management of them to guarantee value for money for the taxpayer… the operational details are being worked out.

“I’ll leave it to Home Office ministers to come back with the finer points of detail on the decision they’ve made, but work is under way to ensure the asylum services continue to operate as normal, to deal with the management problems.”

He added: “We did need to review these disastrous contracts on asylum accommodation we inherited. We’re doing so to improve management and guarantee value for money for the taxpayer.”

Labour’s asylum crisis was brought into sharp focus on Monday as new figures revealed almost 6,000 migrants have crossed the Channel this year.

This is already higher than the 5,435 migrants who arrived in January, February and March 2024 – at the time a record for the first quarter of a calendar year.

It is also well above the 3,793 arrivals in the first three months of 2023 and the 4,548 in the equivalent period in 2022.

The cumulative total for 2025 of 5,847 people is up 36% on this point last year (4,306) and 59% higher than at this stage in 2023 (3,683), according to analysis. Some 3,791 have crossed this month alone.

And the number of asylum seekers living in hotels has increased by 8,000 since Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer vowed to close the taxpayer-funded rooms. More than 38,000 migrants are staying in hotel rooms, costing £5.5million a day.

Putting someone in a hotel room costs £145 per night, compared with £14 for accommodation such as houses, bedsits and flats, the National Audit Office said.