Novotel Stevenage, Knebworth Park

The Novotel Stevenage is set in the grounds of Knebworth House, off the A1(M) at junction 7. The site is owned by Fairview Hotels (Knebworth) Ltd, part of the same Fairview Hotels portfolio that owns the Novotel Ipswich. From September 2022 the hotel was closed to the paying public to provide asylum accommodation under a Home Office contract administered through Clearsprings Ready Homes^[1]Press.

Stevenage has been one of the longer running asylum hotel sites outside London, with the Novotel and the Ibis Stevenage both used for dispersal. By summer 2025 the two hotels were reported as accommodating around 322 asylum seekers between them^[3]Press.

In June 2025 a leaked letter showed Labour run Stevenage Borough Council had written to Fairview Hotels (Knebworth) Ltd warning that it intended to issue a planning enforcement notice unless the Novotel stopped being used to accommodate asylum seekers. Council planning officers took the view that the use amounted to a hostel, and that the building only had permission to operate as a hotel^[2]Press.

Following the August 2025 High Court ruling in favour of Epping Forest District Council in the Bell Hotel case, Stevenage formally opened an active investigation into both the Novotel and the Ibis, described in national coverage as part of a wider wave of Labour councils weighing planning law action against asylum hotels in their districts^[3]Press^[4]Press.

At the £170 per person per night Migration Observatory benchmark^[5], a roughly 100 room hotel run at full asylum occupancy implies headline taxpayer exposure of about £17,000 per night and roughly £6.2 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^[6]NAO.