A historic hotel in Cheshire with ties to the Royal Family will close its doors to asylum seekers next month.
All residents of The Crewe Arms Hotel are set to be relocated to alternative sites and, where possible, to “more appropriate dispersed accommodation”.
Connor Naismith, the Labour MP for Crewe & Nantwich, said the site opposite the town’s railway station would stop being used by people in the asylum system from the end of April.
The closure was confirmed later by the Home Office.
The traditional hotel has ties to the Royal Family, with Queen Victoria becoming a frequent visitor, staying overnight on her journey to her summer holidays in Scotland.
The passage via the hotel became frequent for the monarch after Prince Albert acquired an interest in Balmoral Castle in 1848, with an underground tunnel built to enable Queen Victoria to move freely from the station.
A message on the hotel’s website confirms it will reopen to the public on April 20, with bookings being taken from that date onwards.
Mr Naismith said he previously wrote to ministers asking for the closure of asylum hotels in the region “as a matter of urgency”.
A Home Office spokesman said: “Work is well under way to close every asylum hotel, with more suitable sites being brought forward to ease pressure on communities and cut asylum costs”.
The Crewe Arms Hotel, Cheshire, will stop housing asylum seekers
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The decision comes after Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood revealed plans to reduce the burden of asylum seekers on the taxpayer, seeking to close asylum hotels nationwide, and incentivise failed asylum applicants to leave the country with payments up to £40,000.
More than 100,000 people applied for asylum in the UK in 2025, with 41 per cent arriving in via small boats.
The remainder include those who arrived by other illegal means, or who came to the UK legally and applied for asylum while holding a valid visa.
The Home Secretary is also looking to expand the list of nations from which visas will be held, including new additions such as Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan from this month amid “visa abuse”.
Beyond its ties to the monarchy, the hotel became a meeting place for Cheshire County Council, continuing to host council meetings until County Hall on Castle Drive was completed in 1957.
The 19th-century venue has been closed to the general public for around three and a half years, with the nearby Ibis Styles Crewe on Emperor Way and The Royal Hotel on Nantwich Road also being closed to the public.
The use of hotels to house asylum seekers has come under much scrutiny, with sites up and down the country playing host to protests.
One of the most prominent examples is the Bell Hotel in Epping – which saw frequent, almost weekly protests against its use to house asylum seekers that often ended in violence and arrests.
The Government must house an asylum seeker if they cannot support themselves while their claim is being considered, with 103,426 people in asylum accommodation as of December 2025.
Around 30 per cent of those people were in hotels – used when there is not enough shared housing available, such as HMOs or former military sites.
The number of those seeking asylum has grown exponentially in recent years due to a backlog built up over the Covid period.
More people are in hotels across the south of England than elsewhere in the UK.
However, Sir Keir Starmer has pledged to stop the use of hotels by 2029.