Historic Milton Keynes hotel used to house asylum seekers is up for sale for £6m

The controversial Woughton House Hotel is still housing asylum seeker guests, despite being up for sale with a price tag of more than £6m.

The Grade II listed, lavishly-decorated mini mansion at Woughton on the Green was the subject of an investigation this month by the far-right Britain First group, whose members visited the site and tried to talk to the asylum seekers.

But they were treated with disdain by a couple of the guests and ordered to stop filming by three on-site security guards.

The asylum seekers were young males and were seen to be freely walking out of the hotel’s four-acre grounds into the village.

The hotel was first selected by the Home Office in late 2021 to house 107 migrants freshly arriving in the UK to seek asylum. At the time, local residents and councillors were concerned that there had been no consultation and the contract could lead to problems in the area.

Earlier this year, the premises were put up for sale, marketed by London company Knight Frank. The spec describes it as a 51 bedroom boutique country house hotel with a multi-faceted business, and invites “offers in excess of £6,000,000.”

Many people has assumed the asylum seeker usage had ended, and the property was being sold to revert back to a 4-star hotel and popular wedding venue. But the Britain First video, which was published on social media, has proved otherwise.

Ward Liberal Democrat councillor Paul Trendall drew up a list of “pressing questions” for the Home Office in December 2021, asking who would be placed in the hotel and what security checks would be carried out.

"I never did get any proper answers ,” he said today (Tuesday). “The Home Office just said they did not know or could not say to everything I asked them.”

"We did not know why this location was selected, or why volunteers are being asked to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements by the Home Office’s contractor, Clearsprings. There are so many unanswered questions.”

But almost two years on, Cllr Trendall says the asylum seekers have generally been well-behaved guests. “There's certainly been no reports of a sudden increase of anti-social behaviour or crime in the area,” he said.

"But the fact is that this is not the way to treat people and it’s not the place to keep people… I think most people would like to see Woughton House Hotel restored to the use for which it was intended – a local hotel and a wedding venue.”

Home Office contracts to house asylum seekers are financially lucrative and it is not known why the owners of Woughton House are selling.

The property was sold by Mercure Hotels in 2014 and, according to the government’s Land Registry, it is currently owned by a company called Argun Hotels Ltd, which has a registered office in Hampton in Middlesex.

But Companies House shows Argun Hotels ceased trading in November 2021 and is now Dominium One Ltd, registered to the same Hampton address.

The nature of business is given as “Other letting and operating of owned or leased real estate.”

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