Private firm that provides accommodation for asylum seekers has seen profits TREBLE

A private company that helps find hotels for asylum seekers has seen its profits treble to more than £6million.

Calder Conferences, which is based in Leeds, received £20.6m from the Home Office in 2021, increasing to £97m in 2022, official documents showed.

Turnover for the year ending February 2022 rose from £5.98m to £23.66m and pre-tax profits trebled to £6.3m.

Meanwhile, company director Debbie Hoban saw her annual remuneration multiply nearly ten times to £2.2m.

Home Office data uncovered by the BBC showed a total of 395 hotels are being used to house 51,000 asylum seekers due to a shortage of official accommodation.

The total bill for taxpayers comes in to more than £6m a day.

Out of these hotels, the majority - 363 - are in England, 20 in Northern Ireland, 10 in Scotland and two in Wales.

Outsourcer Serco provides around 109 hotels in England, mainly in the Midlands, East and North West.

Another company, Gloucester-based Mears Group, runs 80 hotels in north-east England, Northern Ireland and Scotland.

The firm increased its annual revenue by 22 per cent in 2021, with its annual report saying this was 'largely driven' by its work housing asylum seekers.

Asylum applications hit a near two decade high of 74,751 last year, according to Home Office data.