How much owners of homeless hotels in Glasgow were paid

Glasgow City Council uses 30 hotels to provide emergency accommodation for people who are homeless to prevent rough sleeping.

Since the council declared a housing emergency in the city in November last year the convenor for homelessness said the use of hotels has doubled.

The Glasgow Times used Freedom of Information laws to find out how much has been paid to the owners of the hotels in the last year.

(Image: newsquest)

Glasgow City Council confirmed that owners have been paid £26,724,422 in the financial year 2023/24.

The figure is an increase of more than £6m.

In 2023/23 the hotel owners were paid £20,368,474. The difference is a rise of 31%.

The cash comes from the public purse including the council budget and housing benefit.

A breakdown of the figure for 2023/24 is not available but of the previous year's total of £20.3m, £11,781,607 came from housing benefit payments and another £3,248,066 from covid income for the Scottish Government.

Previously, the council had stated Health and Social Care Partnership will have to meet around £10.5m of the 2023/24 bill.

The Glasgow Times has been running the End the Homeless Hotel Shame campaign, highlighting conditions in some of the premises used by the council to house people.

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We have told of people reporting cases of bed bugs and mice, filthy rooms stained mattresses, thefts and drug taking and violence.

We previously reported the scale of the use of hotels in 2023/24.

From April 2023 to March 2024 the council booked out 324,604 hotel room nights to accommodate homeless people.

That means an average spend of £82 per night or £576 per week for a room.

The hotels include the Rennie Mackintosh Hotel in Union Street, where we reported Jonathan Ward spend six nights and said the room was so bad he spent the bight in the bathroom wrapped in a blanket.

His description included: “The stench was horrific, there was no air.

“Around the small single bed, there was soft furnishing which was stained with I don’t know what.

"I spent the night in the bathroom wrapped in a blanket I had brought myself with my headphones to block out the noise.”

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Alex McGinty told us: “The Mackintosh Hotel which had lots of mice in the rooms and was very filthy.

“It was very cold and I would lay awake all night listening to mice in the walls and in the room, getting to sleep was a nightmare.”

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On other hotels a man told us: “The St Enoch’s is nasty. It has rats and mice. I saw a mouse and there were rat traps."

 Teenager, Adam Taylor told us: “I was scared for my safety staying in the Queen’s Park Hotel.

“I thought I was going to be eaten alive by bugs and woke up constantly covered in red marks from them.

“The conditions were disgusting. The mattress was covered in stains, the smoke alarm was detached, the furniture was broken, and the kettle was burnt.”

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Despite repeated attempts to speak to the owners or management of the hotels we have named no-one has responded to our calls to answer questions.

A spokesperson for Glasgow City Council, said: “The council is duty bound to find and provide emergency accommodation to those affected by homelessness.  To do this means using - and paying for - a range of B&B and hotels in the city.

“The pressures the city is facing right now in relation to housing and homelessness is no secret. We are having to spend more and more on hotel and bed & breakfast use in our attempts to meet demand and avoid people having to sleep rough.

“Providing accommodation comes at a cost which the city council is obliged to pay.”