Palm Hotel, Childs Hill

The Palm Hotel, formerly the Garth Hotel, sits at the western end of Hendon Way close to Brent Cross and is recorded in independent London hotel directories at 64 to 76 Hendon Way, NW2 2NL^[3]. The borough planning portal listing for the property identifies the site by its current Palm Hotel name during the asylum-contingency period^[2]Council.

The June 2022 Communities Committee update on Barnet's asylum-seeker contingency hotels confirms the Palm Hotel among the borough's four contingency sites and details council coordination of voluntary support, with emergency Covid funding used since early 2021 to commission organisations to each support two of the four contingency hotels in the borough^[1]Council. Barnet has been one of the London boroughs publicly raising concerns about Home Office treatment of asylum seekers and the lack of consultation on hotel selection.

The Palm Hotel was previously known as the Garth Hotel and traded as a 3 star hotel until 2014 before being rebranded under the Best Western affiliate brand. Independent London hotel directory listings continue to record the building identity transition for the same NW2 2NL postcode, which is important when matching council records, planning documents and press references to the same physical site^[3].

At the £170 per person per night Migration Observatory benchmark^[4], an estimated peak of about 120 residents at the Palm implies headline taxpayer exposure of around £20,400 per night and roughly £7.4 million per year. That is above the May 2025 NAO contract review average of about £5.84 million per year per hotel^[5]NAO.