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

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.

Officials will undertake the review in April.

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 ‘doing all we can to stop the use of hotels’, including bringing forward the use of alternative accommodation such as surplus military sites.