Angled photo of a hotel

Hotel evictions: What can we do?

This short guide from the CIH Housing Rights website is written for anyone working with asylum seekers in hotels and other asylum accommodation.

The guide focuses mainly on the options for those who are granted asylum, because those refused may need to focus more on any appeal rights, or on moving on to section 4 support for those who cannot leave the UK. The Asylum Support Appeals Project has briefings on this.

What is happening?

  • At the end of June 2025:
    • There were 71,000 asylum cases awaiting an initial decision, relating to 91,000 people, 18 per cent fewer than at the end of June 2024
    • The number of cases awaiting an initial decision is 47 per cent lower than the peak at the end of June 2023 (134,000 cases)
    • At the end of June 2025, there were 106,075 individuals in receipt of asylum support
    • 32,059 (30 per cent) were in hotel accommodation, but 43 per cent fewer than the peak of 56,042 at the end of September 2023.
  • Responding to concerns about how many former asylum seekers were becoming homeless, the government extended the time people could stay in asylum accommodation once they got a positive decision giving them refugee status to 56 days, as a pilot, but this came to an end for most single people in September 2025, who now get only 28 days from their decision
  • Until at least December 2025, families and some individuals (pregnant women, those aged 65 and over, and people with a disability) will be given 56 days from the date they get their refugee decision
  • The Home Office has also moved from providing physical proof of status (biometric residence permits) to ‘eVisas’: documents that can be accessed online. 

So now, when an asylum seeker gets a positive decision, they receive a letter from the Home Office telling them they have refugee status: the ‘determination of claim’ letter and an eVisa. They then have a further 28 or 56 days accommodation and support and must then leave. The Home Office issues a discontinuation of support letter 28 days before the relevant date (so, for single people, it may arrive with the determination of claim letter, but for families and the individuals allowed to stay for 56 days it will arrive 28 days letter. The accommodation provider also issues a notice to quit at least seven days before they have to leave. The local housing authority for the area is also notified by email or via a shared data portal when accommodation is discontinued.

What can we do?

1. Extend support

The Asylum Support Appeals Project has published a comprehensive briefing on discontinuation of asylum support and this is on their website with other briefings. 

  • It may be possible to appeal a discontinuation of asylum support, depending on the type of support and the reason given for the discontinuation. The ASAP briefing explains this in detail. Advisers should contact ASAP if they want help with this via their adviceline 0203 716 0283 (Mon, Wed, Fri 2–4pm).
  • If a person has not received their eVisa at least 28 days before their support ends or has been given notice to quit with less than seven days to run, they should contact Migrant Help, who can organise an extension to their support.

2. Get local authority help

Local councils (London and metropolitan boroughs, district and town councils) in England have a duty to help those in their district who are threatened with homelessness within 56 days (under the Housing Act 1996 and Homelessness Reduction Act 2017). Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have similar homelessness legislation (dealt with in Northern Ireland by the Housing Executive).

  • Councils must ensure that free advice to prevent homelessness or help to find accommodation is available to anyone in their area, including asylum seekers or those refused asylum. So, anyone threatened with eviction from asylum support accommodation can ask the council for help, but some may only get advice.
  • Where a person is eligible and threatened with homelessness, section 195 of the Housing Act 1996 (as amended) says: “The authority must take reasonable steps to help the applicant to secure that accommodation does not cease to be available for the applicant’s occupation.” So, the local council should negotiate to extend the accommodation where possible. 
  • Some people can get more help than this from the local council if the council has “reason to believe” they are “eligible”, homeless and “in priority need”. The local council must either prevent their homelessness or provide them with emergency accommodation, and sometimes help them find longer-term housing as well. (NB. The ‘priority need’ requirement does not apply in Scotland.)
  • People with refugee status are eligible. They do not need the eVisa to prove it, just a document to give the council “reason to believe” they are a refugee, such as the determination of claim letter from the Home Office. 
  • People with a child, pregnant woman or vulnerable person in their household are in priority need. People may be vulnerable because of old age, mental illness or handicap or physical disability or “other special reason”.
  • People evicted from asylum support accommodation with no eVisa will be vulnerable whatever their health/disability/age because they cannot work or receive benefits and have no other resources (if they had they would not be in asylum accommodation). Councils may have some trouble recognising this, but it was clearly established in an important case: R v Kensington & Chelsea LBC ex p Kihara (1997) 29 HLR 147. 
  • So, anyone evicted from asylum support accommodation because they now have refugee status, but who does not have an eVisa, should get emergency accommodation from the council. Anyone threatened with eviction should get help from the council to prevent the eviction, for example, by council officers negotiating for an extension of support with the Home Office or getting them help to sort out their eVisa.

You may find useful information about how to apply as homeless on the website’s pages on applying as homeless to your local council (for people in Scotland, look here).

3. Find other accommodation

There are very few options for other accommodation available, but refugees may find help from community or family. Some organisations may be able to refer to hosting schemes or hostels, but most places are full. Refugees need support on a temporary basis due to the short notice-period policy being enacted by the Home Office and will require support to access longer-term options like social or private rented housing.

Local authority advice duties under section 179 of the Housing Act 1996 as amended include advice and information on “any help that is available from the authority or anyone else…and…how to access that help” and must “be designed to meet the needs of persons in the authority’s district including, in particular, the needs of…any other group that the authority identify as being at particular risk of homelessness in the authority’s district”. Similar rules apply in Scotland and Wales.

Organisations working with refugees and asylum seekers may find it useful to set up liaison with the council senior officer responsible for these services to ensure that the advice and information available meets the needs of refugees facing eviction.

4. Get help with money or food

Even if the council provides accommodation, new refugees will still be unable to apply for most benefits or start work until they get a biometric residence permit (BRP). Those with children can ask local council social services for support via section 17 of the Children Act. People who have care needs may also be able to get some support from social services. Social services are run by London boroughs, county councils and metropolitan councils (in Northern Ireland, by the Health and Social Care trust). People may also be able to get help from local food banks or projects.

5. Change the policy

The sudden policy change back to a 28-day notice period has been a disaster for refugees and for local authorities, and CIH has already joined with the Refugee Council and other organisations in sending a joint letter to the ministers responsible for asylum seekers and for homelessness, protesting about the changes.

  • You can get your local council to raise this through the Local Government Association.
  • If your local council does not yet have a migrant champion, this shows why they need one. Get helpful councillors to join the Migrant Champions Network.
  • Collect examples of the problems caused and share them with your local authority, your local Migration Partnership, any membership organisations or partnerships you are in and any other calls for evidence of the hardship and difficulties this is causing.

6. Get ready

There is a lot of work to be done here. This is a brief checklist of the information you may need if you are to help someone facing eviction.

1. What does the refugee want? Not everyone wants to apply to the council or tackle the Home Office or Migrant Help, if there are other options like staying with friends that may be preferable. But now is also the time to encourage realistic expectations: it may be possible to get the council to accommodate for a few weeks, but even for those whom the council house on a longer-term basis, they may spend several years in temporary accommodation, possibly a long way from where they are now.

2. What information do you need? At a minimum:

  • Proof of homelessness: The eviction letter.
  • Proof of vulnerability: Medical and other reports may be particularly helpful if you want to argue for someone to stay local or for a need for a particular type of accommodation; some sort of letter/explanation of why this specific person finds themselves with no money, no right to work and no home will be needed if you are arguing vulnerability; other evidence about why they will find it difficult to cope (e.g. circumstances of leaving the home country and of the journey, communication difficulties, including language, experiences in the UK).  
  • Documents to support any special circumstances: Homeless people are often placed a long way from where they are now. If there is a need to stay local, for example, to access complicated treatments, or to get or provide essential support, line these proofs up, ideally before applying to the council, but certainly as soon as possible afterwards. Also line up any evidence about what may make certain types of accommodation unsuitable.

3. What are the agencies that can help? 

  • Care4Calais has a comprehensive advice sheet available here. It has not been updated with the change of notice to 28 days from 56 days but includes lots of useful information and help.
  • REAP, an organisation working with refugees in West London, publish the Housing Info/‘Get Ready to find your own Room’ Asylum Seekers’ Action Pack  for asylum seekers and new refugees in plain English, with a vocabulary guide and lots of practical hints, which can be obtained by emailing sarah@reap.org.uk.
  • Organisations offering housing advice and advocacy locally.
  • Shelter has links to most local housing advice services.
  • Those providing support, including food and other necessities:
  • Help into employment: Many local councils run services to help local people into jobs. It may help to alert them to the problems people being evicted from hotels are facing and ask how they can help get people into employment. Breaking Barriers offers help to refugees looking for work in several major cities.
  • Local community centres and organisations and arts sports and leisure facilities and projects: Isolation has been a problem for many in hotels.  So, connecting to local organisations, centres and facilities is important, and can also provide helpful contacts and leads for accommodation and employment.

Please do get in touch if you have information to add to this briefing or want to suggest amendments. You can do this by sending an email to: policyandpractice@cih.org.

Feel free to print or otherwise use this briefing, we have provided a PDF version available to download directly below.

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