Best Western Stoke-on-Trent City Centre, Hanley

The site is a converted Victorian railway hotel on Trinity Street, Hanley, with 135 bedrooms. From late 2022 the hotel was withdrawn from public booking and used as contingency asylum accommodation under the Home Office Asylum Accommodation and Support Services (AASC) contract held in the Midlands by Serco. It was one of the two Stoke hotels named by ITV News Central as having been closed to paying guests for asylum use, alongside the nearby Britannia owned North Stafford^[1]Broadcast.

On 21 October 2022 Stoke-on-Trent City Council obtained a without notice interim injunction against Home Office use of a city centre hotel for asylum dispersal, on the basis that the change of use breached planning control. At the on notice hearing on 2 November 2022, Mr Justice Linden refused to extend the injunction, finding the council's case weak and concluding that asylum use did not amount to a material change of use under planning law^[2]Press^[3]Press.

The Stoke case was one of four similar bids in autumn 2022, alongside East Riding of Yorkshire, Ipswich and Great Yarmouth. All four interim injunctions were ultimately overturned, and Serco proceeded to use the Stoke hotels for asylum dispersal. The contracts were later raised in a Westminster Hall debate in February 2023 led by local Stoke MPs^[4]GOV.UK.

At the £170 per person per night Migration Observatory benchmark^[5], a 135 room hotel run at full asylum occupancy implies headline taxpayer exposure of about £22,950 per night and roughly £8.4 million per year. The May 2025 NAO contract review put the average per hotel run rate across the wider portfolio at about £5.84 million per year^[6]NAO.