Beresford Hotel, Newquay

The Beresford is an Edwardian seafront hotel on Edgcumbe Avenue, dating from the early 1900s, with 106 bedrooms, a restaurant, ballroom and parking for around a dozen vehicles. From November 2022 the hotel was taken out of public booking and used by the Home Office to house approximately 200 asylum seekers, the only such hotel known to have been used in Cornwall during that wave.

The hotel quickly became the focal point of rival protests. ITV News West Country reported that on 25 February 2023 protest group Cornwall Resists formed a line outside the building in solidarity with residents, while opposing protesters also gathered at the site^[1]Broadcast.

On 6 April 2023 the Home Office informed Cornwall Council that the Beresford was closing to asylum use immediately, with the approximately 200 residents to be moved to alternative accommodation in the South East within 24 hours^[3]GOV.UK. The hotel was refurbished in time for the Easter Bank Holiday and subsequently put on the market with a guide price of £3.85m^[4]Broadcast.

At the £170 per person per night Migration Observatory benchmark^[5], a peak headcount of about 200 residents implies headline taxpayer exposure of around £34,000 per night. Across roughly five months of operation that works out to about £5.1 million in total spend, in line with the May 2025 NAO finding of an average per hotel run rate of about £5.84 million per year^[6]NAO.