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<h1><span style="color: #0c3951;">Greater Manchester Asylum Hotels Group</span></h1><p>We are not looking for luxury, just a basic space we can call home, where we can live with dignity.</p>

Greater Manchester Asylum Hotels Group

We are not looking for luxury, just a basic space we can call home, where we can live with dignity.

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We are the Greater Manchester Asylum Hotels Group. We are people who have come to the UK seeking safety, and have spent time living in asylum hotels and other forms of asylum accommodation.

Like many others in the system, we have experienced difficult feelings while waiting for our asylum decision, and many of these feelings are connected with living in a hotel. We are not looking for luxury, just a basic space we can call home, where we can live with dignity. We want to contribute to British society, and believe we have a lot to offer - among our members, we have worked in nursing, teaching, special educational needs, engineering, journalism, music, and more. But living in asylum hotels, we feel cut off from communities.

So, supported by GMIAU, Caritas Shrewsbury and Asylum Matters, we have come together to speak about our experiences, build solidarity, and develop a positive vision of what asylum accommodation should look and feel like.

Our asks

1. While we are waiting for an asylum decision, we should be housed in a way that makes us feel safe, listened to as human beings, and connected with the local community.

2. Asylum accommodation should be in shared houses, not in hotels or other large sites.

3. When asylum accommodation is discussed, on a local or national level, our voices should be heard and valued.

4. We want to contribute and be able to support ourselves. People seeking asylum should have the right to work.

The group is a safe space where we find empathy and support from other group members, as well as speaking out to drive change. If you have lived in an asylum hotel and would like to get involved in the group, we’d love to hear from you.

Our vision for asylum accommodation

In our experience waiting for an asylum decision, we’ve felt a lot of negative feelings, many related to the accommodation we’re housed in. We thought about what positive feelings should be associated with the place we live, and together we wrote a vision for asylum accommodation.

Download our vision

Our side of the story

In recent years, what is said in the media and online about asylum hotels has become more and more toxic, and we have seen this erupt into frequent protests outside hotels. These protests make us feel unsafe. We know the protesters don’t represent everyone in Britain, but we also know some people are not happy about having asylum hotels in their area, and we believe it is time they heard our side of the story.

When we published this statement, it went far and wide. It was shared many times on social media and featured in the BBC and the Manchester Evening News. People were surprised and inspired to hear the voices of people who are so often silenced and spoken about.

Read our statement

Other work

How changes to the asylum system make us feel

In 2025 we published this statement in reaction to the changes to the asylum system that were being announced – taking away the right to settle, removing support from families, and limiting our rights in order to remove more families from the UK. These changes make us feel unsafe and unwelcome.

Download our statement

Submission to a parliamentary enquiry

When the Home Affairs Select Committee asked for evidence on asylum accommodation for their enquiry, we knew the voices of people living in that accommodation must be heard.

Download our submission of evidence

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