Britannia Country House Hotel, Didsbury

The Britannia Country House Hotel is a three star property on Palatine Road in Didsbury, set in landscaped grounds adjacent to the floodplain of the River Mersey. The hotel forms part of the Britannia chain owned by Alex Langsam and has been used by the Home Office for asylum accommodation under the Serco North West regional contract.

Primary care for residents at the hotel is provided by GTD Healthcare under the Asylum Seeker Contingency Service, a dedicated NHS commissioned service for people seeking refugee status who are placed in contingency accommodation in Greater Manchester^[1]Press.

On 1 January 2025 the River Mersey burst its banks during a prolonged spell of heavy rain across north west England. The Britannia Country House was surrounded by floodwater and could not be safely evacuated on foot. Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service deployed inflatable boats and dinghies to ferry residents from the hotel to dry ground; reports put the number of asylum seekers brought to safety at around 500^[2]Press.

GTD Healthcare confirmed that its specialist services team attended the site the following day to recover medical equipment, locate high risk patients who had been moved to other accommodation, and provide remote GP support during the clean up. On site primary care resumed on 20 January 2025^[1]Press.

In August 2025 the Britannia Country House was named in national coverage of the wave of asylum hotel protests across England. The Irish Times reported that an Ethiopian asylum seeker resident at the hotel appeared at Manchester Magistrates' Court charged with the sexual assault of a woman, a charge he denied, and that the hearing prompted a demonstration outside the hotel^[3]Press.

The same Irish Times piece set the protest in the context of the live streamed weekend gatherings outside multiple asylum hotels in summer 2025, including the Bell in Epping and the Britannia in Canary Wharf.

At the £170 per person per night Migration Observatory benchmark^[4]and a peak occupancy of 500 residents, the Britannia Country House implies headline taxpayer exposure of about £85,000 per night and roughly £31 million per year. That is well above the May 2025 NAO portfolio average of about £5.84 million per hotel per year, reflecting the scale of the site^[5]NAO.