Ramada Hotel Sutton Coldfield (Penns Hall)

The 2025 Yahoo News UK / Birmingham World investigation set out the ownership and payouts in detail. The five directors named are Balkar Singh Johal (79), Balraj Singh Johal (77), Iqbal Singh Johal (71), Jasbir Singh Johal (72) and Sarnpal Singh Johal (68). All are British residents but are not reported to live near the hotel^[1]Press.

Across the three financial years 2022, 2023 and 2024, the directors of the operating vehicles Sutton Coldfield Hotel Ltd and Savera Holdings UK extracted a combined £5.62 million through salaries and dividends. The figure breaks down as £4.35 million of lump sum dividends and £1.27 million in fees, averaging approximately £1.1 million per director over the period^[1]Press.

Following the press disclosure, the Prime Minister publicly pledged to claw back excess profits earned by asylum accommodation providers, with the Sutton Coldfield numbers cited as a reference case^[5]Press. Refugee Action criticised the wider accommodation contracting model, arguing that contracts had failed to deliver safe and secure homes for residents while generating significant private returns^[1]Press.

Sutton Coldfield's constituency MP, the Rt Hon Sir Andrew Mitchell, has lobbied for the closure of the Penns Lane site since 2021, arguing that its location is too far from inner-city Birmingham support services for it to function as suitable asylum accommodation^[2]Hansard.

In the Asylum Hotels debate of 13 January 2025, Mitchell pressed the Minister for Border Security and Asylum, Dame Angela Eagle, to wind the hotel down. Eagle replied that it was the Government's intention to close all asylum hotels as soon as possible, once the backlog inherited from the previous administration had been cleared^[3]Hansard. Mitchell's constituency office has documented further interventions, including the previous Conservative administration's plans to shut the facility down before the 2024 general election^[2]Hansard.

Penns Hall is a country house hotel set in around twenty acres of grounds in the Walmley area of Sutton Coldfield, north of Birmingham. The site traded commercially under the Ramada brand before being signed up to a Home Office accommodation contract by Serco, the Midlands AASC regional provider. Birmingham World noted that the building was a filming location for the long-running Crossroads television series, giving it an unusual cultural profile alongside its asylum role^[4]Press.

Press reporting consistently puts the peak headcount at around 340 residents, well above the resident counts at most contingency hotels in the West Midlands^[1]Press.

At the £170 per person per night Migration Observatory benchmark^[6], a site running at the reported peak of 340 residents implies headline taxpayer exposure of about £57,800 per night and roughly £21 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^[7]NAO, which places the Sutton Coldfield site well above the typical asylum hotel by spend.