Migrants play cricket and get free music lessons in 'UK's heavily guarded asylum hotel'

According to footage shared online, migrants are being put up in hotel rooms with four-poster beds and game consoles. The video, which offers a glimpse inside one of Britain's heavily guarded migrant hotels, has revealed the luxurious setting where asylum seekers are also welcomed.

Reportedly filmed inside a hotel in West Sussex that houses hundreds of asylum seekers, the migrants appear to be enjoying music lessons. Footage shows hotel residents enjoying drum and vocal lessons. In another clip, men are enjoying games of cricket in the hotel's car park. In the canteen, migrants are served buffet-style meals, with staff seen serving breakfast to residents, including beans, hash browns, cooked tomatoes, and hard-boiled eggs. One resident has 10 eggs on his plate.

Aston Knight, who claims to have worked in the hotel as a contractor, said he shot the footage between October and December 2024.

The video also showed piles of empty lager cans and evidence of drug consumption. One scene appears to show a device used to grind cannabis in a room.

In some videos, rooms include televisions, landline phones, and jewellery. Mr Knight also films landline phones that appear to be set to allow international calls.

Mr Knight said: "I was absolutely shocked at the level of luxury. It was something I didn't expect." He said his experience changed his view of migrant hotels, adding he used to support their use.

He said: "While the country goes through a cost of living crisis and people are struggling to pay their mortgages, seeing the absolute luxury was shocking."

Protests have taken place outside migrant hotels across the UK in recent weeks, most intensely in Epping, where police have made 18 arrests and charged seven people in connection with successive demonstrations.

Home Office figures published in March show some 32,000 asylum seekers are being accommodated in about 210 hotels around the country.

British taxpayers are forking out £6m a day to house asylum seekers in hotels, a Labour peer has revealed. This shocking figure comes despite Rachel Reeves vowing to close every migrant hotel by July 2029.

On Friday, the Home Office announced that asylum seekers face being made homeless if they refuse orders by officials to move out of hotels into alternative accommodation.