Preston Leyland Hotel, South Ribble

The Preston Leyland Hotel, formerly trading as the Hallmark Hotel Preston Leyland and now the Preston Leyland Hotel Signature Collection by Best Western, is a 93 room four star hotel and conference venue on Leyland Way close to Junction 28 of the M6. Before April 2022 the site was best known as a wedding and conference venue serving South Ribble and the wider Preston area^[1]Press.

On 4 April 2022 Best Western confirmed that Serco, the Home Office contractor responsible for asylum accommodation across the North West, Midlands and East of England, had struck a deal to use the site for up to 150 asylum seekers. All forthcoming weddings, conferences and leisure bookings were cancelled at short notice^[3]Press. The first cohorts to move in included families fleeing the war in Ukraine and people seeking refuge from the Taliban in Afghanistan^[4]Press.

The original 2022 South Ribble MP Katherine Fletcher wrote to the then Immigration Minister Kevin Foster to register serious concerns about the conversion, citing the hotel's isolated location, limited public transport links and absence of nearby amenities for new arrivals^[2]Press.

By August 2025 the seat had changed hands and Labour MP Paul Foster told the Lancashire Post that there had been not one reported incident to police at the Leyland Hotel across three years of asylum use, while still pressing for the site to be returned to weddings and holidays as soon as feasible^[6]Press. South Ribble Borough Council has tracked the site through its Refugee Resettlement Progress reporting cycle to councillors^[8]GOV.UK.

In August 2025, after the High Court briefly granted Epping Forest District Council an injunction against the use of The Bell Hotel for asylum seekers, South Ribble Borough Council confirmed it was considering its own legal options against the continued use of the Leyland Hotel^[7]Press. The Lancashire Lead reported the Leyland Hotel as one of the focal points of the wider Lancashire campaign by councils and residents to bring forward end dates on contingency hotels across the county^[9]Press.

No injunction proceedings against the Leyland Hotel have been filed at the time of writing. The Court of Appeal overturned the Epping injunction at the end of August 2025, leaving local authorities with a much narrower path to challenge Home Office placements on planning grounds.

At the £170 per person per night Migration Observatory benchmark^[10], a contracted capacity of 150 residents implies headline taxpayer exposure of around £25,500 per night and roughly £9.3 million per year at full occupancy. Across more than three full years of asylum use the cumulative spend on the site is well above £25 million, although actual run rate varies with occupancy. The May 2025 NAO contract review put the average per hotel run rate across the wider portfolio at about £5.84 million per year^[11]NAO.