The empty Stradey Park Hotel will not be used to house asylum seekers, a Home Office minister has confirmed — as Llanelli‘s MP told the House of Commons the landmark has gone into receivership.
Dame Nia Griffith, Labour MP for Llanelli, raised the hotel’s future during Home Office questions in Parliament on Monday, sharing a clip of the exchange on Wednesday.
“With the news that the Stradey Park hotel has now gone into receivership, what assurances can the Minister give my constituents in Llanelli that his Department has no plans to use the premises for asylum seeker accommodation?” she asked.
The Minister for Border Security and Asylum, Alex Norris, replied: “I assure my honourable Friend and colleagues across the House that we are closing hotels, not opening them.”
Posting the clip afterwards, Ms Griffith said there was now “official confirmation” that the hotel will not house asylum seekers — and that the building is “currently in the hands of the receivers”, with updates on its future to be announced by them in due course.
(Image: House of Commons)
The Furnace hotel closed with immediate effect in early March, and weeks later HM Revenue and Customs filed a High Court winding-up petition against its operating company, Gryphon Leisure Limited, with other creditors backing the action.
Companies House records show Gryphon Leisure is still listed as an active company, with no winding-up order or liquidation recorded against it — suggesting the receivership relates to the hotel property itself, a step typically taken by a lender owed money against a building.
The company has been busy at Companies House in recent months: overdue accounts were filed in March, a compulsory strike-off action over late paperwork was discontinued in February, and last month its registered office moved from Hounslow to an address on Cowbridge Road East in Cardiff.
Investors who bought individual rooms in the hotel under its previous fundraising schemes are among those owed money — a group campaigners wrote to directly during the asylum row.
The receivership is the latest turn in a saga that began in summer 2023, when plans to house hundreds of asylum seekers at the hotel saw nearly 100 workers lose their jobs.
Months of protests followed at the Furnace site, with police making 17 arrests in the early weeks of demonstrations. The hotel’s owners later won a court injunction limiting the protests.
Carmarthenshire Council launched legal action against the hotel’s owners in a bid to block the plan. The council lost its case in the High Court, and later decided against an appeal.
The Home Office withdrew the plan in October 2023. The county’s police and crime commissioner said the department should be held accountable for the failed scheme.
The hotel’s owners later said they wanted to rehire staff and reopen, and the venue returned to trading — even being announced as a commercial partner of the Scarlets before shutting its doors without warning in March.
Last week, urban explorers filmed inside the closed hotel, finding the power on and beds still made, prompting a police warning to stay out of the building.
Local representatives — including Hengoed councillors Martyn Palfreman and Ed Skinner, Elli ward councillor Steve Williams and Ms Griffith — have been working to address security concerns at the site, arranging fencing through the county council and making contact with the receiver.
Ms Griffith first secured that commitment from the minister in the days after the hotel closed in March — Monday’s exchange puts it on the Commons record.
What happens to the building now rests with the receivers, who are expected to set out the next steps for the site in due course.
There has been local interest in the landmark’s future before: a community group previously launched a bid to buy back the hotel. The council, meanwhile, has ruled out purchasing it itself.
