Waverley Hotel, Whitehaven

The Waverley is a small Tangier Street hotel a short walk from Whitehaven harbour. Whitehaven News reported in August 2022 that the building had just been bought by a new owner and that between 29 and 34 male asylum seekers would be moved in within days under a Serco contract for the Home Office, with no prior public consultation. Copeland political leaders said at the time that the deal had been treated by the Home Office as a private commercial arrangement^[1]Press.

In October 2023 the Home Office named the Waverley Hotel as one of around 50 contingency hotels closing by the end of January 2024^[2]Press. By December 2023 the operating company that ran the building had been placed into liquidation owing more than £170,000 to staff, suppliers and HMRC, having traded for around 16 months almost entirely on the Home Office Serco contract^[3]Press.

The freehold itself was put up for auction in July 2024 at a £280,000 guide price, and failed to sell on the day, illustrating how the privately traded asylum hotel model can leave the taxpayer covering both the contract spend and the residual public liabilities (unpaid wages, unpaid HMRC) when the small operator behind a single hotel collapses^[4]Press.

At the £170 per person per night Migration Observatory benchmark^[5], 34 men in the Waverley implies a headline taxpayer exposure of about £5,780 per night and around £2.1 million per year. That is well below the May 2025 NAO portfolio average of about £5.84 million per hotel per year, reflecting the small site size^[6]NAO.

On top of that headline contract spend, the £170,000+ left unpaid to staff and HMRC when the operator collapsed counts as a separate operator failure cost: a public liability that landed outside the contract envelope but was directly enabled by it. We log it under ancillary costs.