- The Home Office moved nearly 300 asylum seekers from two Aberdeen hotels into Farmer’s Hall on September 12, 2025.
- The change supports Labour’s plan to end asylum hotel use across Britain and shift people into alternative accommodation.
- Hotel housing cost £2.1 billion in 2024-25, as more than 32,000 asylum seekers stayed in contingency hotels.
(ABERDEEN, SCOTLAND) – The UK Home Office moved nearly 300 asylum seekers in Aberdeen on September 12, 2025, shifting them out of two hotels and into Farmer’s Hall, a vacant student accommodation block in Rosemount, as part of a wider drive to stop using hotels across Britain.
The relocation involved people from Iran, Somalia and Eritrea who had been staying at the Hampton by Hilton in Westhill and the former Patio Hotel at Aberdeen Beach. Farmer’s Hall has 150 rooms.
Aberdeen’s move came amid a national policy under the Labour government, which pledged to end asylum hotel use by the end of the current Parliament. The Home Office has committed to closing asylum hotels nationwide, while steering people into Houses of Multiple Occupation, family houses, modular buildings and larger sites such as former military bases.
That national shift has carried a sharp financial argument. By March 31, 2025, 35% of asylum seekers, more than 32,000 people, were in contingency hotels, and hotel use cost £2.1 billion in 2024-25, more than half of total asylum support expenses.
Aberdeen had already been part of that system for some time. As of October 18, 2023, the Scottish Government said 3 hotels in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire housed 288 asylum seekers under the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999.
The relocation in the city drew protests and criticism from council leaders, who said they had too little notice before the transfer took place. Safety and consultation quickly became central local complaints.
The Home Office defended the move, saying it had consulted local partners and was trying to place people in “more appropriate sites like disused accommodation” to reduce community impact. That response set out the government’s preferred case for the change: move people out of hotels and into sites it considers better suited for longer use.
In Aberdeen, that meant replacing hotel rooms with a single repurposed building in Rosemount. Farmer’s Hall, as vacant student accommodation, fit the Home Office approach of using existing non-hotel properties rather than continuing to rely on commercial rooms.
The hotels involved reflected the varied shape of asylum accommodation in the city. One was the Hampton by Hilton in Westhill, a branded hotel outside central Aberdeen; the other was the former Patio Hotel at Aberdeen Beach, a site with a different setting and history but the same role in contingency housing.
The Home Office commitment sits within a national effort to cut reliance on emergency hotel space, though the government has not specifically confirmed a count of exactly 11 hotels closed that would include one in Aberdeen. What is clear is the broader policy direction and Aberdeen’s place within it.
Officials have paired that policy with a wider mix of accommodation types. Alongside HMOs, family housing and modular units, the government has looked to larger sites such as Wethersfield in Essex and Cameron Barracks in Inverness, extending a model that moves asylum seekers away from conventional hotels and into more fixed locations.
Similar closures and relocations have taken place in Perth, Falkirk and Dundee. Those moves, like Aberdeen’s, have often brought protests even as the policy continues to press for lower costs and less hotel use.
That creates a practical strain for cities asked to absorb new arrivals into different settings. The government’s push centers on savings and reduced hotel reliance, while local authorities and communities face the harder question of how support services keep pace when asylum seekers are moved into urban accommodation at short notice.
