Latest news with #ClearspringsReadyHomes
Scottish Sun
16-05-2025
- Business
- Scottish Sun
Britain's migrant hotel ‘king' becomes BILLIONAIRE after fortune soared by £265m, as Sunday Times Rich List released
Most of his wealth comes from Home Office contracts LIVING LARGE Britain's migrant hotel 'king' becomes BILLIONAIRE after fortune soared by £265m, as Sunday Times Rich List released Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) SUNDAY Times Rich List reveals migrant hotel "king" has become a billionaire. Graham King has amassed a £1.015 billion from his asylum empire it has been revealed. 5 Essex tycoon Graham King, 58, has amassed a £1.015 billion from his asylum empire 5 Migrant hotel tycoon Graham King is a keen amateur racing driver. Credit: Tim Stewart 5 King's business started off when he purchased a caravan site Credit: Tim Stewart The tycoon's wealth skyrocketed this year with a massive £265m increase pushing him over the line to become a billionaire. He is now among The Sunday Times Rich List's newest billionaires after only making it onto the list last year. King, 58, is an Essex asylum hotel tycoon who made his impressive fortune through his company Clearsprings Ready Homes. The company is paid by the home office to provide accommodation for asylum seekers. It has a massive £1.7 billion turnover with King's firm raking in almost £4.8 million a day. King now uses his wealth to fund a lavish lifestyle for him and his girlfriend and pursues his passion of amateur racing. His fortune reached record highs alongside record high numbers of people claiming asylum in the UK. The number of people claiming asylum climbed from 91,811 in 2023 to 108,138 last year, a record high. The news comes just after PM Kier Starmer announced a crack down on immigration. King once owned a caravan park and disco and grew up in Canvey Island, Essex. Clearsprings recent contracts include one with the home office that runs until September 2029. Fury as hotel firm housing asylum seekers in 'all-inclusive resort' paid £700m a year of YOUR money The most recent contract is estimated to be worth a massive £7.3 billion. The huge success of King's company has seen his personal wealth skyrocket. He is now officially a billionaire according to The Sunday Times Rich List. Graham King first made it onto rich list last year, owning 99% of Clearsprings' shares. His wealth has exploded since, catapulting him from the 221st spot on the list to the 154th. Home Office contracts to house asylum seekers have been awarded mostly to three companies. King's Clearsprings Ready Homes, Mears Group and Serco. Clearsprings provides accommodation mostly in old military barracks, flats and hotels. King, now officially a billionaire, launched his property empire in 1999. He has made the news for the condition of his properties before with inspectors finding "failures of leadership and planning" in his operations. Asylum seekers were housed by King's company in "decrepit" and "run down" barracks in Kent and Pembrokeshire. King's already massive wealth rose 35% this year which and now sits at £1.015 billion. For the fourth year in a row, Goji Hinduja and family have topped the Sunday Times Rich list, with the investors sharing a net worth of £35.304 billion. The list reveals the country's 350 richest individuals who share a net worth of £772.8 billion, a three per cent decrease from last year. They suffered a fall of £1.892 billion from last year's survey. The minimum entry level for the list flatlines at £350 million. This year's list marks the largest drop in billionaires in the guide's 37-year history, with just 156 making the list compared to its peak of 177 in 2022. Other celebrities who made the list include Ellen Degeneres, Charlotte Tilbury, Ed Sheeran and Brewdog Founder James Watt. 5 King and his girlfriend frequently holiday together Credit: Tim Stewart
Times
13-05-2025
- Business
- Times
Firms housing asylum seekers owe Home Office millions in profit
The three companies that provide asylum accommodation owe the government tens of millions of pounds because they have made too much profit, MPs have been told. However, none of them have yet paid a penny back to the Home Office. The revelations came during an evidence session with executives from Serco, Clearsprings Ready Homes and Mears hosted by the Commons home affairs committee as part of its inquiry into the soaring cost of asylum accommodation. Last week the National Audit Office revealed that overall the ten-year contracts with the three companies will cost taxpayers £15.3 billion, triple the amount the Home Office originally estimated when it signed the deals in 2019. All three companies have gained record profits since taking on the migrant hotel
Daily Mail
13-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
Company owned by billionaire 'Asylum King' planning 15,000 beds in new properties to 'replace migrant hotels'
A company owned by billionaire 'Asylum King' Graham King is planning 15,000 beds in new properties to replace migrant hotels. Asylum accommodation provider Clearsprings Ready Homes insisted the facilities would be 'much more affordable' than placing migrants in hotels on full board. Clearsprings and two other companies which hold deals to supply asylum accommodation also told MPs they have yet to pay back any cash to the taxpayer under profit share clauses in their contracts with the Home Office. It comes after watchdogs revealed last week that asylum seeker housing - including hotels and so-called 'dispersed accommodation' such as self-catering flats - is costing the taxpayer £4million every day. Managing director of Clearsprings Ready Homes Steve Lakey told a Commons committee: 'We have proposed - and we're talking to the Home Office about it at the moment – some what is called 'overflow dispersed accommodation'. 'It's a slightly different variant on self-catering dispersed accommodation. 'We've got about 15,000 bedspaces that we have proposed that could be utilised to replace hotels directly. 'Much more affordable, much more akin to dispersed accommodation and - most importantly - self-catering and in [the] community, so less of a draw than hotels.' Clearsprings owner Mr King was catapulted onto the Sunday Times Rich List last year after cashing in on the UK's migrant crisis with an estimated net worth of £750million. In the past year his wealth is estimated to have soared above £1billion and he is placed 154th in the 2025 edition of the list, to be published this weekend. Mr King leads a jet-set lifestyle patronising some of the world's top hotels and dining at Michelin-starred restaurants, often in the company of his glamorous Latvian girlfriend Lolita Lace, who at 39, is 18 years his junior. Questioned on the company's profits, managing director Mr Lakey said Clearsprings' contract has a 'profit share' clause which requires it to refund the taxpayer for any profits above five per cent. Its profits are currently running at 6.9 per cent, he said, and 'the total since the beginning of the contract is £32million'. None of the cash has yet been returned to the Treasury as it is awaiting audit, but is 'all there ready to go', he told the home affairs select committee. Jason Burt of another provider, Mears, said his firm had suggested repaying the Home Office £13.8million from its profits under the clause – and their calculations are also currently being audited by the government. Claudia Sturt of the third company, Serco, said it was 'not yet in scope for profit share'. Last week shock figures from the National Audit Office (NAO) showed the overall asylum accommodation bill of more than £15billion over 10 years is triple the Home Office's original estimate. Contracts were originally forecast to cost £4.5billion over a decade from 2019 but are now expected to run to £15.3billion over same period after the Channel crisis exploded. It means that on average the taxpayer will spend £4,191,780 a day on housing asylum seekers over the life of the contracts. A separate breakdown from the NAO showed overall costs in 2024-25 were £1.67billion. That amounted to £4,567,123 a day on average, or £3,172 a minute. Asylum hotels 'may be more profitable' for companies holding the contracts than other types of housing, the government's official auditors said. At the end of December, 42,000 asylum seekers were in Home Office 'contingency accommodation', including 38,000 in hotels, they added. It means that Clearsprings gets the go ahead for the new-style accommodation it could reduce the total number of asylum seekers in hotels by 40 per cent. Clearsprings, Mears and Serco operate two or three UK regions each. The Home Office currently has 210 asylum hotels in operation compared to a peak of more than 400, when they were costing £9million a day, it is understood. Labour has closed 23 hotels since the general election and a further seven will shut by July. However, arrivals across the Channel have surged by a third year-on-year. In total since Labour came to power there have been more than 35,000 arrivals, with 601 migrants making it to British soil on Monday. Last year saw more than 108,000 asylum claims – by small boat migrants and others – which was the highest number since records began in 1979.
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The asylum king: How an Essex businessman made a billion from migrant hotels
The scene was a Westminster committee room, the year 2016, and a former Army major, grey-haired and dressed in suit and tie – was facing an uncomfortable line of questioning. James Vyvyan-Robinson, who served with the Royal Green Jackets, was then director of Clearsprings Ready Homes. The company made its money, then as now, by housing asylum seekers in Britain, as contracted to do so by the government. The Parliamentarians grilling Vyvyan-Robinson that February day were not there to congratulate him on the firm's success. '[T]o the outside world, this entire thing looks like a bit of a racket and you have been accused of profiteering,' said Chuka Umunna, then a Labour member of the Home Affairs Committee. '[I]t looks like profiteering at the expense of the Exchequer, and profiteering from people who are desperate and fleeing a perilous situation.' Vyvyan-Robinson countered that Clearsprings provided the service it was contractually required to deliver, adding: 'We are able to do that and make a very slim profit.' Less than 10 years later, that profit doesn't look so slim. This week, it was reported that the founder of Clearsprings Ready Homes, a businessman from Essex called Graham King, had become a billionaire. The 58-year-old's wealth increased by 35 per cent to £1.015 billion in the past year, according to reports, boosted by the rising numbers of people seeking asylum in Britain. Some 38,000 asylum seekers in total are now estimated to be housed in 222 hotels around the country, and another 66,000 on other sites, with Clearsprings being one of the key providers of accommodation, among a handful of others. As thousands continue to arrive via small boats, the cost to the Government of the 10-year asylum contracts is expected to rocket from its initial £4.5bn in 2019 to £15.3bn by 2029, National Audit Office figures suggest. A not inconsiderable share of that money is going to Clearsprings. Vyvyan-Robinson, now 67, resigned as director of the company in 2023, less than a year after he was reported to be living in a £1 million riverside mansion in King remains in control, retaining the majority of shares in the Clearsprings parent company. Now the 154th richest person in the country, as per the 2025 Sunday Times Rich List, he's been dubbed 'the asylum king'. The accommodation his firm has provided, working with various subcontractors, has been dogged by controversy over the years. In 2021, conditions at two sites where Clearsprings was housing asylum seekers, Napier Barracks in Kent and Penally Camp in Pembrokeshire, were branded 'decrepit,' 'impoverished' and 'run down' by inspectors. Two years later, more than 70 people, children among them, protested about conditions at two Clearsprings-run London hotels by sleeping on the street. In fact, the criticism stretches so far back that by the time Vyvyan-Robinson was being questioned by the Home Affairs Committee at Portcullis House in 2016, the firm had already faced negative publicity. At its Lynx House site in Cardiff, nestled in a row of terraced properties, asylum seekers had been made to wear coloured wristbands in order to receive food, a practice that attracted criticism, including from the Committee. 'Do you understand how un-British it is… identifying them as people were identified in an earlier, darker age?' the committee chair asked Vyvyan-Robinson, who for his part said he would not defend the practice. An alternative was already being implemented, he pointed out. It wasn't the only complaint raised about Lynx House, which was also said to be grossly overcrowded. Almost three years after the committee hearing, questions still hung over the standard of some Clearsprings accommodation. Over a 22-month period, little more than a quarter of Clearsprings properties were found to be compliant by Home Office inspectors, Prospect magazine reported. It was citing results published by the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration. Almost 15 per cent of inspected Clearsprings properties were reportedly described as 'uninhabitable', and one in 50 as 'unsafe'. But King's wealth grew as the years went on, and as the government continued to outsource the provision of migrant accommodation to for-profit companies. Clearsprings reportedly has an ongoing contract with the Home Office to provide accommodation in southern England and Wales until September 2029. The estimated worth of the contract is said to be £7.3 billion. So, how did King get here? His story starts on Canvey Island, that windswept spit of Essex marshland on the edge of south-east England. It was here that his father, Jack King, moved his family from Romford, East London, in the early 1960s. Jack was also a businessman, a shed salesman who bought a caravan park from the council and transformed it into a lucrative mobile home business. Graham and his brother Jeff spent years working for their father at the site before eventually taking over when he retired. It was sold in 2007 for £32 million. The family reportedly also owned a variety of other businesses, including a car dealership, taxi company and a number of nightclubs (which played host to performers including Shirley Bassey). They were also said to have run an under-18s disco in Leigh, Essex, but local authorities withdrew their licence after receiving a string of complaints about teenagers vandalising vehicles and vomiting in the surrounding streets. Graham's father also served as a local Conservative councillor as well as a financier of the local Canvey Island Football Club, which he helped to win six promotions. Jack 'always took an interest in local politics,' says John Pring, an estate agent who worked with the family. 'He was charming, an excellent businessman, always putting his family first.' Jack died in 2016, but instilled his business sense in his son Graham, says Pring. He describes Graham as 'not to be underestimated, as he learnt from his father'. It's a view that is seemingly borne out by Graham's eye-watering success. Graham King founded Clearsprings at the end of the 20th century. The New Labour government at the time was looking to accommodate asylum seekers across the country, and in 2000, King's firm reportedly signed a five-year contract to be among the providers. It wasn't long before The Observer had published a story headlined 'The king of asylum slums,' describing King as a 'millionaire asylum baron…who often does business from his mobile phone in the back of a black stretch limo.' Bad press wasn't all that King had to deal with. In 2003, he settled a legal battle with his former business partner, Michael Bilkus, who had taken him to the High Court over a verbal agreement about ownership and control of the company. Pring's involvement with Clearsprings, meanwhile, only went as far as drafting out the original application to the government to get the firm onto the tender list for providing migrant accommodation, he says. 'Once they got onto the tender list, I stepped away from it a hundred per cent. It was clear to me that if it was successful, it was going to be a huge business and they needed major commercial expertise to help them bring it off.' Even so, he admits to being 'really surprised' to see it becoming as profitable as it has. By the mid-2000s, Clearsprings' net profits had reportedly risen to £6 million. By January 2023, they stood at £60 million, and the firm was reportedly accommodating about 24,000 asylum seekers in accommodation funded by the taxpayer. A year later, its profits had surged once more, reportedly to the £90 million mark. 'Maybe the government should have looked at the small print a bit better,' suggests Pring, regarding the money-making opportunity this has proved to be. King is reported to have left Canvey Island long ago, moving to a 60-acre farmhouse in a village near Colchester in 2000. He's believed to now split his time between properties in Mayfair, West London, and Monaco. Last year, reports suggested he had embarked on a new adventure as an amateur racing driver and had taken a number of trips to the Caribbean with his Latvian girlfriend, 18 years his junior, having split from his wife. But for all the apparent glamour, his business is still registered to an unprepossessing address just off the A127 in Rayleigh, Essex. Drivers whizzing past on the Southend Arterial Road would hardly guess that the low-rise office building partly concealed behind trees is the base for a company that has made vast sums out of Britain's asylum system. It's a system that many argue is broken; the fact that some people can cash in to this extent is a sign that something has gone wrong, critics contend. In 2023, a group of more than 150 local councillors from different political parties and parts of the country called on the government to stop outsourcing asylum accommodation to profit-making companies. It should be local authorities providing the accommodation themselves, they argued in an open letter to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. 'The Home Office too often looks for short-term fixes, and spends taxpayer money on unaccountable private companies,' the councillors claimed. Certainly, King is not alone in turning a profit out of the UK's migration crisis. Alex Langsam, who owns Britannia Hotels, a chain which has supplied accommodation for asylum seekers, is estimated to be worth £401 million and was ranked at number 311 on this year's Sunday Times rich list. Back in that Westminster committee room in 2016, it seemed the politicians could already see where all this was going. Vyvyan-Robinson's salary at the time exceeded that of the Prime Minister, then Labour MP David Winnick pointed out. The former Army major and King together had 'become prosperous as a result of asylum seekers', Winnick added. If MPs thought this was wrong, it doesn't seem to have changed much. In the years since, as the Government continues to grapple with the question of migration and how to handle it, King's wealth has only grown. The Home Office has been approached for comment. Clearspring has declined to comment. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. 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Telegraph
12-05-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
The asylum king: How an Essex businessman made a billion from migrant hotels
The scene was a Westminster committee room, the year 2016, and a former Army major, grey-haired and dressed in suit and tie – was facing an uncomfortable line of questioning. James Vyvyan-Robinson, who served with the Royal Green Jackets, was then director of Clearsprings Ready Homes. The company made its money, then as now, by housing asylum seekers in Britain, as contracted to do so by the government. The Parliamentarians grilling Vyvyan-Robinson that February day were not there to congratulate him on the firm's success. '[T]o the outside world, this entire thing looks like a bit of a racket and you have been accused of profiteering,' said Chuka Umunna, then a Labour member of the Home Affairs Committee. '[I]t looks like profiteering at the expense of the Exchequer, and profiteering from people who are desperate and fleeing a perilous situation.' Vyvyan-Robinson countered that Clearsprings provided the service it was contractually required to deliver, adding: 'We are able to do that and make a very slim profit.' Less than 10 years later, that profit doesn't look so slim. This week, it was reported that the founder of Clearsprings Ready Homes, a businessman from Essex called Graham King, had become a billionaire. The 58-year-old's wealth increased by 35 per cent to £1.015 billion in the past year, according to reports, boosted by the rising numbers of people seeking asylum in Britain. Some 38,000 asylum seekers in total are now estimated to be housed in 222 hotels around the country, and another 66,000 on other sites, with Clearsprings being one of the key providers of accommodation, among a handful of others. As thousands continue to arrive via small boats, the cost to the Government of the 10-year asylum contracts is expected to rocket from its initial £4.5bn in 2019 to £15.3bn by 2029, National Audit Office figures suggest. A not inconsiderable share of that money is going to Clearsprings. Vyvyan-Robinson, now 67, resigned as director of the company in 2023, less than a year after he was reported to be living in a £1 million riverside mansion in Scotland. But King remains in control, retaining the majority of shares in the Clearsprings parent company. Now the 154th richest person in the country, as per the 2025 Sunday Times Rich List, he's been dubbed 'the asylum king'. The accommodation his firm has provided, working with various subcontractors, has been dogged by controversy over the years. In 2021, conditions at two sites where Clearsprings was housing asylum seekers, Napier Barracks in Kent and Penally Camp in Pembrokeshire, were branded 'decrepit,' 'impoverished' and 'run down' by inspectors. Two years later, more than 70 people, children among them, protested about conditions at two Clearsprings-run London hotels by sleeping on the street. In fact, the criticism stretches so far back that by the time Vyvyan-Robinson was being questioned by the Home Affairs Committee at Portcullis House in 2016, the firm had already faced negative publicity. At its Lynx House site in Cardiff, nestled in a row of terraced properties, asylum seekers had been made to wear coloured wristbands in order to receive food, a practice that attracted criticism, including from the Committee. 'Do you understand how un-British it is… identifying them as people were identified in an earlier, darker age?' the committee chair asked Vyvyan-Robinson, who for his part said he would not defend the practice. An alternative was already being implemented, he pointed out. It wasn't the only complaint raised about Lynx House, which was also said to be grossly overcrowded. Almost three years after the committee hearing, questions still hung over the standard of some Clearsprings accommodation. Over a 22-month period, little more than a quarter of Clearsprings properties were found to be compliant by Home Office inspectors, Prospect magazine reported. It was citing results published by the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration. Almost 15 per cent of inspected Clearsprings properties were reportedly described as 'uninhabitable', and one in 50 as 'unsafe'. But King's wealth grew as the years went on, and as the government continued to outsource the provision of migrant accommodation to for-profit companies. Clearsprings reportedly has an ongoing contract with the Home Office to provide accommodation in southern England and Wales until September 2029. The estimated worth of the contract is said to be £7.3 billion. So, how did King get here? His story starts on Canvey Island, that windswept spit of Essex marshland on the edge of south-east England. It was here that his father, Jack King, moved his family from Romford, East London, in the early 1960s. Jack was also a businessman, a shed salesman who bought a caravan park from the council and transformed it into a lucrative mobile home business. Graham and his brother Jeff spent years working for their father at the site before eventually taking over when he retired. It was sold in 2007 for £32 million. The family reportedly also owned a variety of other businesses, including a car dealership, taxi company and a number of nightclubs (which played host to performers including Shirley Bassey). They were also said to have run an under-18s disco in Leigh, Essex, but local authorities withdrew their licence after receiving a string of complaints about teenagers vandalising vehicles and vomiting in the surrounding streets. Graham's father also served as a local Conservative councillor as well as a financier of the local Canvey Island Football Club, which he helped to win six promotions. Jack 'always took an interest in local politics,' says John Pring, an estate agent who worked with the family. 'He was charming, an excellent businessman, always putting his family first.' Jack died in 2016, but instilled his business sense in his son Graham, says Pring. He describes Graham as 'not to be underestimated, as he learnt from his father'. It's a view that is seemingly borne out by Graham's eye-watering success. Graham King founded Clearsprings at the end of the 20th century. The New Labour government at the time was looking to accommodate asylum seekers across the country, and in 2000, King's firm reportedly signed a five-year contract to be among the providers. It wasn't long before The Observer had published a story headlined 'The king of asylum slums,' describing King as a 'millionaire asylum baron…who often does business from his mobile phone in the back of a black stretch limo.' 'Maybe the government should have looked at the small print' Bad press wasn't all that King had to deal with. In 2003, he settled a legal battle with his former business partner, Michael Bilkus, who had taken him to the High Court over a verbal agreement about ownership and control of the company. Pring's involvement with Clearsprings, meanwhile, only went as far as drafting out the original application to the government to get the firm onto the tender list for providing migrant accommodation, he says. 'Once they got onto the tender list, I stepped away from it a hundred per cent. It was clear to me that if it was successful, it was going to be a huge business and they needed major commercial expertise to help them bring it off.' Even so, he admits to being 'really surprised' to see it becoming as profitable as it has. By the mid-2000s, Clearsprings' net profits had reportedly risen to £6 million. By January 2023, they stood at £60 million, and the firm was reportedly accommodating about 24,000 asylum seekers in accommodation funded by the taxpayer. A year later, its profits had surged once more, reportedly to the £90 million mark. 'Maybe the government should have looked at the small print a bit better,' suggests Pring, regarding the money-making opportunity this has proved to be. King is reported to have left Canvey Island long ago, moving to a 60-acre farmhouse in a village near Colchester in 2000. He's believed to now split his time between properties in Mayfair, West London, and Monaco. Last year, reports suggested he had embarked on a new adventure as an amateur racing driver and had taken a number of trips to the Caribbean with his Latvian girlfriend, 18 years his junior, having split from his wife. A broken system But for all the apparent glamour, his business is still registered to an unprepossessing address just off the A127 in Rayleigh, Essex. Drivers whizzing past on the Southend Arterial Road would hardly guess that the low-rise office building partly concealed behind trees is the base for a company that has made vast sums out of Britain's asylum system. It's a system that many argue is broken; the fact that some people can cash in to this extent is a sign that something has gone wrong, critics contend. In 2023, a group of more than 150 local councillors from different political parties and parts of the country called on the government to stop outsourcing asylum accommodation to profit-making companies. It should be local authorities providing the accommodation themselves, they argued in an open letter to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. 'The Home Office too often looks for short-term fixes, and spends taxpayer money on unaccountable private companies,' the councillors claimed. Certainly, King is not alone in turning a profit out of the UK's migration crisis. Alex Langsam, who owns Britannia Hotels, a chain which has supplied accommodation for asylum seekers, is estimated to be worth £401 million and was ranked at number 311 on this year's Sunday Times rich list. Back in that Westminster committee room in 2016, it seemed the politicians could already see where all this was going. Vyvyan-Robinson's salary at the time exceeded that of the Prime Minister, then Labour MP David Winnick pointed out. The former Army major and King together had 'become prosperous as a result of asylum seekers', Winnick added. If MPs thought this was wrong, it doesn't seem to have changed much. In the years since, as the Government continues to grapple with the question of migration and how to handle it, King's wealth has only grown.
