ibis Stevenage Centre, Danestrete

The ibis Stevenage Centre is a three-star Accor budget hotel on Danestrete in the SG1 1EJ postcode, sharing the central Stevenage retail block with the Westgate Shopping Centre and within five minutes' walk of Stevenage railway station. The site sits opposite the Stevenage Borough Council civic offices, putting the council's planning officers within direct sight of the building.

The Ibis is the smaller of the two town-centre Stevenage hotels in Home Office contingency use, alongside theNovotel Stevenageat Knebworth Park near junction 7 of the A1(M).

HertsLive (the Hertfordshire Mercury) reported in December 2022 that the Home Office had moved 178 asylum seekers into the town centre Ibis with just 24 hours notice. The hotel had previously been operating as a normal commercial site, with no public consultation or advance notice provided to the local authority before residents began arriving from dispersal accommodation^[1]Press.

In 2023 The Comet covered a public order protest outside the hotel, with anti-asylum demonstrators gathering on Danestrete and a counter-protest forming on the opposite pavement. Hertfordshire Police made no arrests, but issued dispersal notices in the area^[2]Press.

The town centre Ibis on Danestrete sits inside a wider two-hotel cluster with the Novotel Stevenage at Knebworth Park. The Comet reported in early 2026 that as of summer 2025 the two sites were jointly housing 322 asylum seekers, with 178 in the town centre Ibis and the balance at the Novotel^[3]Press.

The Comet's coverage placed Stevenage as one of the denser East of England hotel concentrations, with the two sites accounting for the bulk of the borough's asylum support population through 2024 and 2025.

In 2025 The Comet reported that Stevenage Borough Council had launched a planning enforcement probe across both town hotels. The council argued the long-term Home Office contracts had moved the operation away from a hotel use class and into the territory of a hostel, which would require fresh planning permission. Both Clearsprings Ready Homes (the Home Office contractor) and the freehold owners were notified of the council's position^[4]Council.

Using the 178-person figure reported by HertsLive at the £170 per person per night system benchmark from the Migration Observatory and the National Audit Office, the Ibis on Danestrete alone runs at roughly £30,260 per night, £212,000 per week and £11.0 million per year. Combined with the Novotel Stevenage, the two-hotel Stevenage cluster accounts for around £55,000 per night and £20.0 million per year of taxpayer exposure^[5][6]NAO.