Suites Hotel, Knowsley (Kirkby)

The Suites Hotel sat in a commercial pocket of Kirkby and had been identified by the Home Office as suitable contingency accommodation in early 2022. Knowsley Council subsequently confirmed that it had been given 48 hours' notice that asylum seekers would be moved into the site^[1]Council. Serco managed the day-to-day operation of the hotel under its North West regional contract.

On 10 February 2023, after a video circulated online linking the hotel to an alleged incident on a nearby street, an anti-asylum rally outside the property turned violent. Lit fireworks were thrown at officers and a police van was destroyed by fire. Merseyside Police arrested 15 people aged 13 to 54. Eight men were later sentenced to up to three-and-a-half years for violent disorder^[2]Broadcast.

At the £170/night Migration Observatory benchmark^[3], a 200-bed site implies headline taxpayer exposure of around £34,000 per night. Across its operational lifetime from January 2022 to closure in 2024, the cumulative exposure approached £24 million. The May 2025 NAO contract review put the average per-hotel run-rate across the wider portfolio at about £5.84 million per year^[4]NAO.