Marine Court Hotel, Bangor (Co Down)
The Marine Court Hotel on Quay Street in Bangor, Co Down, was used as asylum accommodation under the Northern Ireland regional contract for several years before its closure was confirmed in February 2026 as part of the 11-hotel closure tranche announced by the Home Office[1]Press[2]GOV.UK. It was the only Northern Ireland site named in that announcement.
Capacity
51
rooms
Per night
£170
per resident
Annual
£3.2m
estimated
Background
Northern Ireland is served by a separate regional asylum accommodation contract held by Mears, with capacity divided between dispersed flats and a small number of hotels. The Marine Court Hotel was one of those hotels and became a high-profile political target — the DUP and TUV led campaigns against its asylum use, including planning-law challenges[1]Press.
Cost analysis
At the £170 Migration Observatory benchmark[3], a 51-room hotel implies headline taxpayer exposure of roughly £8,670 per night and about £3.2 million per year. The May 2025 NAO contract review noted that the Northern Ireland portfolio was small in absolute terms but proportionally high-cost given the lack of dispersed accommodation alternatives in the private rental market[4]NAO.
Per-person per-day cost stack (benchmark)
£170- Hotel rate (room + three meals)£10059%
- Weekly cash allowance£74%
- Legal aid & casework£127%
- NHS / interpreter / utilities£1911%
- Contractor / security overhead£3219%
Cost in context
Marine Court Bangor
£170
benchmark
UK asylum hotel avg
£170
NAO
NI budget hotel
£70
commercial
Hostel bed
£30
commercial
Timeline
Timeline
2022
Hotel taken into asylum use
Northern Ireland regional Mears contract.
2023-25
Repeated local protests
DUP and TUV planning-law challenges against the Home Office.
Feb 2026
Asylum use ends
Only NI site named in the GOV.UK 11-closure announcement.
Sources
- Asylum hotels close as government scales up use of large sites — GOV.UK, 2026
UK government announcement of the 11 asylum hotel closures across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland in early 2026, claiming an annual saving of nearly £65 million.
- Asylum accommodation in the UK — Migration Observatory, University of Oxford, Aug 2025
£170 per person per day in hotels (2024/25 average); used for per-hotel estimates and food/utilities breakdowns.
- The Home Office's asylum accommodation contracts — National Audit Office, May 2025
222 hotels in use; £1.296 billion annual (2024/25); per-hotel approximately £5.84 million.