The New Bridge Hotel, Newcastle

The New Bridge Hotel sits on Newbridge Street in central Newcastle, a short walk from Eldon Square and Northumbria University. It is a three star hotel of 186 rooms operated commercially before the Home Office contract took it out of public booking. The North East, Yorkshire and Humber asylum accommodation contract is held by Mears Group, which has run dispersed and contingency accommodation across Newcastle since 2019.

Newcastle is the only local authority area in the wider North East currently using a hotel for asylum accommodation. The neighbouring authorities of Gateshead, Sunderland, North Tyneside, South Tyneside, Northumberland, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Stockton, and Redcar and Cleveland use dispersed housing only, with no hotel-based asylum residents recorded by the Home Office.

From early August 2025 the hotel became the venue for a series of weekend protests. ITV News reported that police detained demonstrators during the rival anti-migrant and counter-protests held outside the hotel on 2 August 2025^[1]Broadcast. Northumbria Police later confirmed four arrests in connection with public order offences over that opening weekend^[4]Press.

The protests continued through August. Newcastle World logged recurring weekend confrontations on Newbridge Street, including an estimated hundred anti-immigration demonstrators on 30 August facing an equivalent counter-protest from Newcastle Unites, Newcastle Supports Refugees and Stand Up To Racism^[3]Press.

Newcastle City Council leader Cllr Karen Kilgour publicly opposed the use of the hotel and said she shared the government's ambition to end hotel based asylum accommodation^[5]Council. In an interview with ITV News Tyne Tees in August 2025, the council confirmed it is in direct talks with the Home Office to end the contract but is not planning legal action of the kind pursued unsuccessfully by Stoke-on-Trent in 2022 or successfully by Epping Forest in 2025^[2]Broadcast.

Local reporting in 2025 noted the partial drawdown of asylum seekers at the hotel as the wider government policy shifted toward larger sites and away from city centre hotels, although no formal closure date had been published at the time of writing^[6]Press.

At the £170 per person per night Migration Observatory benchmark^[7], a 186 room hotel run at full asylum occupancy implies headline taxpayer exposure of about £31,620 per night and roughly £11.5 million per year. If the local press figure of around 800 residents is taken at face value, the implied annual run rate rises substantially above the per hotel average. The May 2025 NAO contract review put the average per hotel run rate across the wider portfolio at about £5.84 million per year^[8]NAO.