Piries Hotel, Edinburgh

The Piries Hotel sits at 4 to 8 Coates Gardens, a row of Victorian townhouses in the Haymarket conservation area on the western edge of Edinburgh city centre. The site became part of the Home Office hotel maximisation policy in Scotland, with Mears Group, the regional Asylum Accommodation and Support Contracts provider, placing residents at the hotel from 2023 onwards^[1]Press.

City of Edinburgh Council was the subject of a 2025 Freedom of Information request lodged through WhatDoTheyKnow under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002, seeking planning classification records for the Piries and the Learmonth and any council correspondence with the Home Office or Mears Group on these sites. The request explicitly names the Piries as a council-recognised asylum accommodation site^[2].

Edinburgh News, the city edition of The Scotsman, named the Piries alongside the Learmonth in October 2023. The story reported that the Liberal Democrat ward councillor for Inverleith, Hal Osler, had raised significant safeguarding concerns about the suitability of the two hotels for hosting adults in shared rooms, and that residents at the Piries had been told the hotel would undergo refurbishment after Afghan families left earlier in the summer^[1]Press.

Scottish investigative outlet The Ferret has tracked the wider asylum hotel landscape in Scotland, including the role of Mears Group as the AASC regional provider for Scotland and Northern Ireland, and the way specific sites have become the focus of protest activity and policy debate^[4]Press. Scottish Government FOI releases set out what ministers hold on asylum seeker hotel accommodation across Scotland during the same period^[3].

Edinburgh News reported the Piries as a 62 bedroom property with private bathrooms in only some rooms, described by a local councillor as having little to no amenity for long stay residents and as a temporary space unsuitable for housing large numbers of adults^[1]. City of Edinburgh Council leader Cammy Day told the same outlet that the council had written to the Home Office and met with the immigration minister to set out its concerns, but that the UK Government had decided to proceed with the accommodation regardless of council objections.

The 2025 FOISA request to City of Edinburgh Council specifically asks for any safeguarding concerns, complaints or referrals linked to the Piries and the Learmonth, alongside planning enforcement records and any correspondence with the Home Office or Mears Group on objections, consultation or enforcement action^[2].

The Home Office does not publish per hotel costs, so the figures below scale the Migration Observatory 2024/25 benchmark of around £170 per person per night^[5]against the roughly 100 residents reported across the Piries and the Learmonth. The May 2025 NAO contract review confirmed that hotel use under the regional contracts has remained the most expensive accommodation modality across the system^[6]NAO, and the BBC reported headline hotel spend trending around £2.1 billion in 2024/25^[7].