Eight Acres Hotel, Elgin

The Eight Acres is a long-established Elgin hotel and leisure club on Morriston Road. From early May 2023 the hotel began welcoming small groups of asylum seekers under a Mears Home Office contract, with the first 10 residents arriving and a further 40 expected within the following month. Moray Council FOI responses confirm the local authority had no decision-making power over the placement, with the hotel run as a contingency site directly by Mears^[1]Press^[4]GOV.UK.

When the hotel closed to the public on 30 April 2023, Northern Scot reported that almost all staff were made redundant, with customers facing cancelled bookings and gym members chasing membership refunds. Former employees described the closure as a shocking experience and the local effects rippled across the town for months^[2]Press.

In April 2024 the Press and Journal reported the Home Office had terminated its contract with the Eight Acres at the start of July 2024 following the contractual notice period. Residents were notified at least five days in advance and moved to other parts of the asylum estate, ending just over a year of asylum use at the site^[3]Press.

At the £170 per person per night Migration Observatory benchmark^[5], housing 50 residents implies a headline taxpayer cost of about £8,500 per night and roughly £3.1 million across the year of asylum use. 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.