Holiday Inn Express Sheffield, Blonk Street

The Holiday Inn Express Sheffield City Centre is a budget brand hotel on Blonk Street, S1 2AB, a short walk from the cathedral, the Castle Market site and Victoria Quays. The property has historically been a high traffic city centre business hotel and now sits at the centre of community debate over the use of central Sheffield hotels for Home Office asylum accommodation.

Forge Press, the University of Sheffield student newspaper, reported that around 300 UKIP supporters marched from Tudor Square through central Sheffield on Saturday 8 November 2025, ending the demonstration on Blonk Street outside the Holiday Inn Express, which attendees believed was housing asylum seekers. Around 1,000 counter protesters from Sheffield Stand Up to Racism, the Sheffield Green Party and the Sheffield Trade Union Council gathered to oppose the march, with South Yorkshire Police kettling both groups for over an hour^[2]Press. The Tab Sheffield reported the same march in similar terms, including seven arrests under Public Order Act conditions^[3]Press.

The Sheffield Star reported updated Home Office figures showing 278 asylum seekers were housed in Sheffield hotels at the end of 2025, with the Holiday Inn Express on Blonk Street one of the city centre sites referenced in the wider coverage of the South Yorkshire dispersal contract^[1]Press. The same coverage placed the local debate against the broader trend of dispersal driven accommodation use across the city, including dispersed housing as well as hotels.

At the £170 per person per night Migration Observatory benchmark^[4], an approximately 114 room hotel run at full asylum occupancy implies headline taxpayer exposure of about £19,400 per night and roughly £7.1 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 size of a central Sheffield property.