Asylum hotel provider makes £180m profit despite claims of inedible food and rationed loo paper

Despite allegations of terrible conditions at the hotels it uses, a company providing services to asylum seekers has earned nearly $187 million in revenues since being granted lucrative government contracts. Clearspring Ready Homes is one of three businesses with 10-year Home Office contracts to provide accommodation to asylum seekers. The total estimated costs of these services have risen more than threefold since they were announced, from £4 to £4. 5bn to £15bn. Clearsprings, which provides accommodation throughout the south of England and Wales, is expected to be paid £7 billion under new estimates. Any asylum seekers in hotels that have been protested this summer have told the BBC that their outrage should rather be directed at those companies that are profiting from their contracts for looking after migrants. MPs have also scrutinized those Home Office hotel contracts. Residents at several Clearsprings restaurants have told the BBC of poor conditions inside their hotels, as well as sending us photos and video diaries of the food provided, with some of it being "inedible.

Clearsprings Ready Homes has paid almost the same amount in dividends to its parent company since taking over its contract under the previous government in 2019. Graham King, the company's founder, has been contacted by the BBC for comment, but he hasn't replied. Clearsprings Ready Homes has also declined to comment. According to the National Audit Office, Clearsprings and the two other providers that cover the remainder of the United Kingdom have made a total of £383 million from the asylum services since 2019. Clearsprings helps around 30,000 asylum seekers in southern England, London, and Wales. According to the most recent official results, it subcontracts hotels to provide accommodation for about half of those, but it also uses more hotels than the other contractors. The company's dramatic rise in the predicted value of its Home Office contracts is due to a greater use of hotels and more migrants arriving by small boat in recent years, according to a written statement sent by the company to nast a parliamentary committee earlier this year. Clearsprings and one other service have confirmed that they will pay back some funds, above margins set out in the Home Office contracts, but the government hasn't announced whether this has occurred. However, Clearsprings' earnings are not appropriate for the length of its employment and industry in which it works.

Paying as little as possible to the suppliers and taking as little money as they can in profits,

says Maia Kirby of Good Jobs First, one of 60 charities to have written an open letter. According to the letter, people seeking asylum are housed in miserable circumstances, but

millions in public funds. Is simply taken in by a handful of private companies. Clearsprings claims it

prides itself on delivering value for money, quality, and transparency

on its website. However, Ms Kirby said that it is not good value

and I certainly don't think it's transparent.

At Clearsprings' sites, there are signs of inadequate diet, poor sanitation, and rationing of period powder and toilet paper, according to charities. Three meals are included in hotels, but we have heard questions about the quality of food at Clearsprings' subcontracted accommodation. It's just tragic, said an asylum seeker from South America, whom we'll all remember as Andrea. She and her eight-year-old daughter have been living in a hotel for two years, according to her. Some people believe we are living in a paradise, she said.

Ity wanted to live as an asylum seeker for one day, but the beds are soiled, the toilets are cluttered, and everything is broken.

Sometimes food that has passed away is still available," she explained, and meals often lack fruit and vegetables, while heavy carbohydrates such as bread, chips, and rice are included in most meals. Andrea said she boils eggs in her kitchen because that is the only way to get some protein for her daughter. She also uses a food bank because buying more food while living on a budget is prohibitive. The government has been paid 95 dollars per week for the past week.

Farhan Jaisin, a Hackney Foodbank employee in east London, said he was reluctant to give out donations as asylum seekers came to pouring because they were supposed to be catered for. However, when he went into their hotels, he found completely bad food and conditions, including toilet rolls, sanitary products, and some food that had been reportedly rationed, according to the author. How is it possible for one toilet roll per week? he said. Other charities have told us that they have had to feed hungry children from asylum hotels, and that they had seen women who said they were only given seven sanitary towels per month. According to Prof Monica Lakhanpaul, a paediatrician and researcher of child health at University College London, children in asylum hotels are being forgotten.If a parent fed their child in this way, it would be called neglect,

she has focused on women and children in asylum accommodation in the capital for the past 18 months.

Uncooked chicken and bread were still frozen," charities and asylum seekers at Clearsprings websites told the BBC that residents had been served basic meals and dirty mattresses.

After running out of other accommodation, hotels were used to house asylum seekers under the new Conservative government. In recent months, the number of hotels being used for this purpose has decreased to 210, but 400 were in use at their peak in 2023. According to the Home Office, it has reduced the cost of hotels from £9 million a day to £5. 5m per day. Another asylum seeker in Clearsprings, whom we'll all remember, says he acknowledges that British people are dissatisfied with the money being spent, but that the hotel owners and private companies are profiting. He has been in the United Kingdom for five years seeking asylum, having escaped gang violence in South America. I work a lot, I pay the bill.I don't need your help because I can do work," he told us. Asylum seekers are generally unable to work in the United Kingdom, but they can apply for permission to if a decision on their asylum claim takes more than 12 months.

'Obscene' profits

According to the most recent Sunday Times Rich List, Clearsprings' founder, Graham King, is now a billionaire and was the 154th richest person in the United Kingdom. He is the person with significant influence over both Clearsprings Ready Homes and its parent company Clearspring Management, of which he is the sole shareholder, with a dividend payout of over £183 million since 2020. Clearsprings told MPs that some of the funds will be put back into programs such as social housing. Clearsprings replied to questions raised by the Home Affairs Select Committee in May that

temporary emergency accommodation [of ten hotels] is more cost-effective than long-term

housing. It acknowledged that staying in hotels was very bad for people, and that it was trying to get people to consider more long-term solutions. The committee has been investigating the delivery of accommodation from all three providers, as well as how the employees function. Mr King's coMPany's earnings are obscene, according to Liberal Democrat MP Paul Kohler, who serves on the committee, according to the BBC. According to Kohler, the way the contracts were structured incentivised to place asylum seekers in hotels rather than bedsits because they could earn eight times as much money due to higher costs. It was a failure at all levels of government that

private industry has simply been encouraged to run roughshod

with contracts that simply enriched them, according to the king. There is no evidence that the terms of the Home Office contracts have been breached in any way. Mr Kohler, a Wimbledon MP who likened the situation to the PPE fiasco during the Covid pandemic, said he was not against private businesses operating in the sector, but that the government needed to get out of the current contracts. When Clearsprings' managing director, Steve Lakey, told the committee in May that his company was ready to go to the government, he said the department was waiting for the Home Office before transferring the money. The Home Office would not reveal the agreed thresholds at which providers should pay back excess revenue, but Mr Lakey told MPs that Clearsprings made an average of 6. 9 percent of its employees are employed, and you'll have to pay anything

just over 5%. The company's deals with the government last until 2029, but Kohler said the government should consider using a break clause next year because it is

not getting value for money. The select committee also pressed Clearsprings on why £17 million had been paid to Bespoke Strategy Solutions Ltd (BSS), a UAE-based company established in the UAE since 2019. Mr Lakey, a founder of Clearsprings, told MPs that BSS is owned by Mr King and that it invoices Clearspring Management, the parent company, not the asylum arm, for

strategic solutions services. Bespoke Strategy Solutions, a Dubai-based company, was named by the BBC, but the company's founder told us that she had nothing to do with Mr King and had no links to the United Kingdom. She told us that she was unaware of any businesses with a similar name. When asked by the BBC, clearsprings would not comment on BSS. The arrangement of paying a chief executive via a service firm in Dubai, according to Mike Lewis, a consultant with inquiry think tank TaxWatch, is

highly unusual. Since taking office, the government has reduced the asylum backlog by 24%, returned 35,000 people with no right to be in the UK, and reduced asylum hotel spending by more than half a billion pounds, according to a Home Office spokesperson. "We retained an auditor to investigate our suppliers' results in order to get the best value for taxpayer money. Five companies met their set profit-sharing goals, and their excess funds were returned to the Home Office. According to the BBC, the government has been considering other alternatives to private providers using hotels, such as local councils being responsible for housing asylum seekers.