Third council asked to investigate hotels used by asylum seekers

A third council in Northern Ireland has been asked to investigate the legal planning status of hotels housing asylum seekers.

DUP and TUV councillors on Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council have asked officers to establish whether any change of use had been sought for hotels in the council area and for enforcement action to be considered where they do not.

It comes after Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council began an enforcement investigation into the planning status of a hotel where asylum seekers are being housed.

Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council said it would inquire into the matters raised by the DUP and the TUV (Traditional Unionist Voice).

Ards and North Down Borough Council also said it is in “receipt of several queries” regarding the Marine Court Hotel in Bangor and its planning service will review these “in line with its enforcement policy”.

Unionists raised concerns after a court in England granted a council a temporary injunction to block asylum seekers from lodging at a hotel in Essex.

Ballymoney DUP councillor John McAuley said that ruling made it clear that hotels “cannot simply be repurposed into immigration accommodation centres” without going through the proper planning process.

The DUP group said it was not only about compliance with planning regulations but also about what they considered the “wider lack of oversight in the immigration system”.

“Communities have been left in the dark while hotels are converted into accommodation centres without consultation or due process, and this situation cannot be allowed to continue,” McAuley said.

According to Home Office statistics, as of 30 June 2025, 246 asylum seekers were being housed in hotels in Northern Ireland.

That is down from 301 in June 2024 and compares to more than 1,000 in September 2023.

There are 2,228 people in “dispersal accommodation” which is longer-term temporary housing managed on behalf of the Home Office.

The numbers in dispersal accommodation is largely unchanged from June 2024 and compared to 2,075 in September 2023.

The total number of asylum seekers in NI in receipt of support in June was 2,535, unchanged from June 2024 and down from 3,220 in September 2023.

TUV leader Jim Allister MP said he had written to local councils to ask if there are any properties in their district “whose planning permission is for hotel use, but which are being used to house migrants”.

He also told the Nolan Show that anyone arriving illegally into the United Kingdom should be “instantly deported”.

“If they have no legal right to be here then they shouldn’t be here, they shouldn’t be in hotels, they should be put on a plane and sent back to the country from which they came,” he said.

On Wednesday, Trevor Clarke, a South Antrim MLA, and the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) MP for the area, Robin Swann said Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council had opened a planning enforcement investigation into the status of the Chimney Corner Hotel.

The hotel has been the subject of some anti-immigration protests over the past 12 months.

DUP MLA Stephen Dunne has also written to Ards and North Down Borough Council’s planning office “regarding the ongoing use of the Marine Court Hotel in Bangor to house asylum seekers”.

SDLP leader and South Belfast MP Claire Hanna said some politicians were “bandwagon jumping”.

“Of course, hotels aren’t suitable accommodation in anything more than short term, it’s not ideal for the person whether that’s an asylum seeker or somebody who has been living here for a long time, who is in emergency accommodation, because they are used for that purpose as well,” she told BBC Radio Ulster’s Good Morning Ulster programme.

She said housing asylum seekers in hotels also came at an enormous cost to the public purse.

“The solution to me would appear to efficiently and speedily process people’s applications that they’re not languishing in the system for years and years, and also it feeds into our wider and chronic lack of available social housing,” she said.

Alliance assembly member Andrew Muir said that the DUP intervention on the issue lacked compassion.

“What we are talking about here are people who are seeking asylum after perhaps enduring some of the most horrific events,” he added.

He said solutions such as legal routes, faster processing and the right to work should be the focus.