Asylum seekers permanently moved out of Banbury hotel

Banbury House Hotel in Oxford Road, Banbury, has housed asylum seekers waiting for a decision on their application since 2022 as part of the controversial Home Office scheme.

But the government department has announced all asylum seekers have now been permanently moved out of the accommodation and the hotel has been ‘handed back to the community’.

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It comes as part of the government’s ‘efforts to fix the broken asylum system’ by ending expensive stays in hotels and introducing ‘longer-term reform through faster asylum decisions, higher removals and tougher enforcement’.

According to the Home Office, the latest round of 11 hotel closures including Banbury House will save nearly £65million a year.

Asylum seekers in Oxford, file photo (Image: Matt Simpson)

The asylum seekers who were in the hotels have been moved into ‘larger, more basic accommodation’ such as Crowborough military barracks, which opened just three months ago and now houses around 350 ‘illegal migrants’.

Border security and asylum minister Alex Norris said: “Hotels were meant to be a short‑term stop‑gap under the previous government, but they spiralled out of control – costing taxpayers billions and dumping the consequences on local communities.  

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“We are shutting them down by moving people into more basic accommodation, scaling up large sites, removing record numbers of people with no right to remain.  

“This is about restoring control, ending waste, and handing hotels back to the community for good.”

No announcement has yet been made for the asylum hotel Holiday Inn Express, off Grenoble Road near the Kassam Stadium in Oxford.