Best Western Cambridge Bar Hill Hotel

Bar Hill is a postwar village on the Huntingdon Road just outside Cambridge, on the route to the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway and the Longstanton Park and Ride. The Best Western Cambridge Bar Hill Hotel sits at the entrance to the village and was, before the Home Office contract, a 192-bedroom four-star conferencing and weddings hotel with a swimming pool.

Cambs News reported that the Bar Hill Best Western had been procured by the Home Office for asylum use in 2023, with capacity for up to 272 asylum seekers. South Cambridgeshire District Council confirmed in its public information page that arrangements at the hotel were managed by a Home Office contractor, in this case Serco, and that residents were provided with three meals a day, toiletries, a laundry service and £9.10 per week^[2]Press^[1]Council.

South Cambridgeshire MP Pippa Heylings wrote to the Home Secretary expressing concern over the lack of consultation with the local community about the use of the Bar Hill hotel for asylum accommodation. The Cambridge Independent reported the MP letter and the response from local council leaders^[3]Press.

ITV News Anglia reported on 18 October 2024 that a man had telephoned the Cambridge Bar Hill asylum hotel during the wave of disorder following the Southport stabbing, telling hotel staff that he and others would be coming for the asylum seekers inside. Cambridgeshire Police investigated the call and the hotel security and policing arrangements were upgraded for the duration of the protest period^[4]Press.

South Cambridgeshire District Council confirmed that the Home Office had notified it that use of the Bar Hill Hotel for asylum seeker accommodation would cease in the coming months and that residents would be moved to dispersal accommodation or other hotels as spaces became available^[1]Council.

At the £170 per person per night Migration Observatory benchmark^[5]and a peak headcount of 272 residents, headline taxpayer exposure ran at about £46,200 per night and roughly £16.9 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, so the Bar Hill Best Western sat well above the national average for a single Serco site.