Royal Hotel, Crewe

The Royal Hotel is a grade II listed Victorian railway hotel dating to the 1800s, sitting opposite Crewe station on Nantwich Road. Before its current use the building offered 36 bedrooms, The Corner Bar pub and Langtry's function venue. The site was sold to Brilliant Hotels Group in May 2022 for an undisclosed sum and shortly afterwards began operating as Home Office asylum accommodation under the contingency accommodation programme^[1]Press.

In September 2025 footage circulated on social media that local reporting linked to the Royal Hotel. Cheshire Constabulary charged Taha Derwish, 25, a Libyan national of Nantwich Road, Crewe, with sexual touching; he appeared at Chester Magistrates Court on 26 September and was remanded to appear at Chester Crown Court on 24 October. The police charge release does not name the hotel, give the complainant's age, or state the man's residence or immigration status; Crewe Nub News reported that the court heard he had been staying at the Royal Hotel and was appealing a refused asylum claim. Proceedings are active and the defendant is entitled to the presumption of innocence^[4]GOV.UK^[3]Press.

Crewe and Nantwich MP Connor Naismith issued a statement after the arrest confirming he had contacted the Cheshire Police and Crime Commissioner directly upon seeing the footage, and used the case to renew calls for the closure of asylum hotels in Crewe.

Crewe and Nantwich MP Connor Naismith has pressed the Labour government on multiple occasions to end the use of the Royal Hotel for asylum accommodation, calling the hotel model neither appropriate nor sustainable^[2]Press.

The Royal Hotel sat alongside the Crewe Arms on Nantwich Road throughout the 2025 protest cycle. The Crewe Arms was closed by ministerial decision and reopened to paying guests in April 2026, while the Royal Hotel remained in asylum use.

At the £170 per person per night Migration Observatory benchmark^[5], a 36 room hotel run at full asylum occupancy implies headline taxpayer exposure of about £6,120 per night and roughly £2.2 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, which suggests the Royal operates well below the mean given its much smaller footprint^[6]NAO.