Copthorne Hotel Effingham Park Gatwick

The Copthorne Effingham Park is a four-star parkland estate hotel just three miles from London Gatwick Airport, set in 175 acres of grounds and dating to 1841. The Millennium and Copthorne portfolio includes a separate London Gatwick site at Copthorne Way (RH10 3PS), which is profiled separately on this site as the active Copthorne Hotel London Gatwick.

The Copthorne Effingham Park became a migrant hotel in September 2021 in the wake of the August 2021 Operation Pitting evacuation from Kabul, offering accommodation to hundreds of Afghan asylum seekers under the UK Government Afghan Resettlement Programme. The hotel temporarily housed Afghan families fleeing to the UK following the Taliban takeover, with the Ministry of Defence and Home Office co-ordinating the placements alongside Surrey and Sussex local authorities^[2]Press.

East Grinstead and Uckfield MP Mims Davies later said in public statements that the wider Copthorne site cluster accommodated more asylum seekers than the whole of Surrey and took more than half of all those in Sussex^[1]GOV.UK.

In December 2023 Hong Leong, the Singapore-listed parent of Millennium Hotels, publicly noted that the Copthorne Effingham Park was preparing to reopen its doors as a commercial hotel, having concluded its Afghan Resettlement Programme contract. The site was rebranded for the commercial market and resumed taking weddings, conferences and leisure bookings^[2]Press.

At the £170 per person per night Migration Observatory benchmark^[3] and an estimated 350 Afghan residents at peak across the September 2021 to early 2024 period, the Copthorne Effingham Park accommodation contract worked out at about £59,500 per night and roughly £21.7 million per year. Total spend over the approximately 28-month contract therefore landed at roughly £50 million on the £170 benchmark, although ARP accommodation was funded through a different budget line than mainline Home Office asylum accommodation. The May 2025 NAO contract review captures the wider portfolio average of about £5.84 million per year per site^[4]NAO.