Holiday Inn Manchester Central Park, Newton Heath

The Holiday Inn Manchester Central Park sits at 888 Oldham Road in Newton Heath, on the northern edge of Manchester near the boundary with Failsworth and Oldham. The 83-bedroom property is part of the IHG portfolio and trades under the Holiday Inn brand. From 2023 the site was taken into use as Home Office asylum accommodation under the Asylum Accommodation and Support Services contract held in the North West by Serco, and a Serco spokesperson publicly confirmed the company runs the hotel during the August 2024 reporting on the disorder^[1]Press.

At about 6pm on Wednesday 31 July 2024, Greater Manchester Police officers were called to reports of a demonstration on Oldham Road outside the Holiday Inn. Around 40 protesters had gathered, with chants of we want our country back and go home directed at the residents inside. Objects including rocks and bottles were thrown at officers and at members of the public, including a passing bus driver, and specialised units were deployed to disperse the crowd^[2]GOV.UK^[4]Press.

Two men aged 18 and 25 were arrested on the night for violent disorder and assault of an emergency worker. A separate suspect, Joshua Stokes, was later charged with violent disorder and attempted ABH of a police officer and remanded into custody to appear at Manchester and Salford Magistrates Court on 2 August 2024^[3]GOV.UK. The Newton Heath gathering was one of nine protests recorded across Greater Manchester in the days following the 29 July Southport attack, three of which descended into serious violent disorder^[5]GOV.UK.

At the £170 per person per night Migration Observatory benchmark^[6], an 83-bedroom hotel run at full asylum occupancy implies headline taxpayer exposure of about £14,110 per night and roughly £5.15 million per year. The May 2025 NAO contract review put the average per hotel run rate across the wider portfolio at about £5.84 million per year^[7]NAO, so Newton Heath sits broadly in line with the national average for a single Serco North West site.