Britannia Country House Hotel, Didsbury

The Britannia Country House Hotel is on Palatine Road in Didsbury, south Manchester. In March 2021 the Manchester Evening News, reporting the death of a resident at the hotel in August 2020, said the Home Office had confirmed that he was accommodated there from 13 June 2020 until his death. A Home Office spokesperson said in the same report that the department had used hotels as a contingency option because of pressure on the system^[1]Press. The hotel was therefore in asylum use by June 2020. That is the date a source shows use had begun, not necessarily the date it began, and no source found gives an earlier one.

The only count of residents published for the hotel is The Irish Times's, of 21 August 2025, which said the hotel houses 500 asylum seekers, all young men^[5]Press. No count has been found for 2020 to 2024, so 500 is a figure for August 2025 and should not be read back across those years.

On 1 January 2025 the River Mersey burst its banks. GB News reported that Greater Manchester Police said plans were in place to start evacuating approximately 500 people from a hotel, and that boats were used^[2]Press. That 500 was a police estimate made as the evacuation began. The Greater Manchester Combined Authority said on 2 January that 445 people were evacuated from the Britannia Hotel in Didsbury after flooding cut off power and water supplies^[3]Council. The Manchester Evening News, quoting the police, said the 445 included residents, members of staff and guests^[4]Press. The 500 was therefore not a count of those evacuated.

The Home Office confirmed to the Manchester Evening News that the hotel had been used as accommodation for asylum seekers, who had been found an alternative place to stay^[4]Press. The hotel was back in asylum use by August 2025, when The Irish Times reported 500 asylum seekers there^[5]Press. The date it reopened has not been published.

In August 2025 the Britannia Country House was named in national coverage of the protests at asylum hotels across England. The Irish Times reported that about 30 protesters assembled at its guarded entrance, and that an Ethiopian asylum seeker resident at the hotel had appeared at Manchester Magistrates' Court charged with sexual assault, a charge he denied^[5]Press.

At the £170 per person per night Migration Observatory benchmark^[6] and the August 2025 count of 500 residents, the hotel 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^[7]NAO, reflecting the scale of the site.

The running total in the box above is this site's standard estimate: the count of 500 multiplied by £170 for each day from 13 June 2020 to the end of August 2025, the last month a source confirms the hotel in use. It assumes the August 2025 count throughout, because no count is published for 2020 to 2024, and it does not subtract the weeks after the January 2025 flood, when residents were moved out and the date the hotel reopened is not published.