Holiday Inn Express Greenock, Cartsburn

The Holiday Inn Express in Cartsburn, Greenock, sits at the eastern end of the town close to the Cartsdyke and Cartsburn industrial area. Inverclyde Now reported in 2022 that the 70 room property had been closed to public guests after being commissioned by the Home Office, alongside other contingency hotels across the UK, to handle increased numbers of asylum seekers awaiting decisions on their claims^[1]Press.

In October 2023 STV News reported that the Home Office and Mears Group planned to almost double the population at the Cartsburn site by moving from single occupancy to enforced room sharing, raising capacity from 69 to 126 men. Inverclyde Council and the Inverclyde Health and Social Care Partnership were briefed on the change in advance of a panel review on 31 October 2023, with the Home Office stating that several men had self identified as willing to share rooms and had already begun doing so in advance of the formal capacity uplift^[2]Press.

The Ferret's investigative reporting on Mears Group contingency accommodation in Scotland in late 2023 named the Greenock Holiday Inn Express as one of the sites where the majority of male residents had already spent more than a year in hotel rooms while waiting for Home Office decisions, with limited integration support and concerns about prolonged limbo^[3]Press. Many of the men in Greenock had been transferred from contingency hotels in other parts of Scotland and Northern Ireland before arriving in Cartsburn.

At the £170 per person per night Migration Observatory benchmark^[4], 126 men at the expanded Cartsburn capacity implies headline taxpayer exposure of around £21,420 per night and roughly £7.8 million per year. That is somewhat above the May 2025 National Audit Office contract review average of about £5.84 million per year per hotel^[5]NAO, reflecting the high resident count for a 70 room property after enforced room sharing was introduced.