Cumbria Park Hotel, Carlisle

The Cumbria Park Hotel sits on Scotland Road in Carleton, on the eastern edge of Carlisle, with around 100 bedrooms. From early 2022 it was withdrawn from paying public bookings and used by Serco under the Home Office Asylum Accommodation and Support Services contract for the North West region. By the end of 2022 the hotel was being used exclusively for women, with most residents reported to remain on site for six to eight weeks before being moved to longer term accommodation elsewhere in the UK^[2]Press.

The then leader of Cumbria County Council issued a public statement strongly criticising the Home Office for using the Cumbria Park Hotel without prior local engagement, while acknowledging that asylum seekers have a legal right to seek refuge and stressing that women in particular needed welcome and support^[1]GOV.UK.

In August 2022 a separate rooftop protest by asylum residents over living conditions took place at another Carlisle Serco hotel, the Milton Hilltop, drawing wider attention to the network of contingency hotels operating in the city alongside the Cumbria Park^[3]Press.

Whitehaven News later reported that as of March and June 2025 there were no asylum seekers housed in any hotels in the Cumberland Council area, with the Cumbria Park already returned to commercial use^[4]Press.

At the £170 per person per night Migration Observatory benchmark^[5], 100 women asylum seekers in the Cumbria Park implies a headline taxpayer exposure of £17,000 per night during the asylum use period and around £6.2 million per year. That sits below the May 2025 NAO contract review average of about £5.84 million per hotel per year for higher capacity sites^[6]NAO.