Revealed: The ex-travel agent making millions from UK migrant crisis: Globe-trotting boss is raking in £2.2M-a-year from housing asylum seekers in hotels
- EXCLUSIVE: Debbie Hoban was paid £2.19m in 2022, up nearly tenfold from £230k in 2021
- She now lives in a £3m country farmhouse and enjoys a string of exotic trips
A former travel agent who won government contracts to house migrants in hotels during the UK’s migrant crisis is now making millions from the taxpayer – and enjoying a luxury globetrotting lifestyle, MailOnline can reveal.
Debbie Hoban, boss of Leeds-based Calder Conferences, was paid £2.19m last year alone, up nearly tenfold from just £230,000 in 2021, and is now one of the most prominent private firm bosses making huge sums of money out of the UK’s crippling asylum seeker crisis.
She now lives in this magnificent £3m country farmhouse and enjoys a string of exotic trips to events like the Abu Dhabi grand prix after her company landed a government asylum seeker contract.
And the main reason for the tripling in profits to more than £6m last year for Calder Conferences has been the lucrative Home Office contracts awarded to it and other companies – now costing the taxpayer £6m a day.
Calder is among a host of firms now being paid to house small-boat arrivals and other asylum seekers in almost 400 hotels around Britain.
Debbie Hoban (pictured) was paid £2.19m in 2022, up nearly tenfold from £230k in 2021
She now lives in this magnificent £3m country farmhouse, pictured here
Mrs Hoban is now one of the most prominent private firm bosses making huge sums of money out of the UK’s crippling asylum seeker crisis
The news came as Home Office data uncovered by the BBC showed the sheer scale of the migrant accommodation crisis, with a total of 395 hotels all over the country are being used to house 51,000 asylum seekers due to a severe shortage of official accommodation.
The total bill for taxpayers comes in at more than £6.8m a day.
At least 42 of the 48 English counties now have hotels accommodating migrants, according to recent reports.
The number has risen by more than 10,000 in less than three months after the Home Office emptied the Manston processing centre in Kent and dispersed thousands of Channel migrants to hotels across the country.
In November, Manston, a former RAF base, became dangerously overcrowded with 4,000 migrants – more than double its capacity – after more than 30,000 migrants made the Channel crossing in the last five months of 2022.
Official documents show that Mrs Hoban’s company received £20.6m from the Home Office in 2021, increasing to £97m in 2022. Turnover for the year ending February 2022 rose from £5.98m to £23.66m and pre-tax profits trebled to £6.3m.
The contract represents a bumper payday for Mrs Hoban, a mother-of-three who previously to building up this business in recent years ran a low-profile independent travel agency.
Mrs Hoban, 63, now lives with her husband, Peter, 60, in a sprawling converted grain mill in West Yorkshire.
The vast and spectacular home – with a triple garage and screened off with extravagant wrought iron gates – was transformed by the couple, with four bedrooms, a swimming pool and jacuzzi and a basement wine cellar.
The couple also linked an adjoining mill owner’s cottage to the house via a glass spiral staircase – with the finished project bagging an award at the 2018 ICF Builder Awards.
Steve Bailey, of contractor Landmarks (UK) Ltd, said of the development in 2018: ‘A once damp, cold, drafty and structurally unstable building of the past is now a safe, warm, cozy magnificent home, and will be for many generations in the future.’
Social media shows Mrs Hoban enjoying lavish trips, including feasting on oysters and Champagne, and placing her at the F1 Grand Prix in Abu Dhabi.
She also jetted to Dubai, Bhutan and India’s Taj Mahal on family jaunts.
She and her husband jointly own Calder Conferences Ltd through another firm called Depho Estates Ltd, which as well as the couple themselves, lists their sale executive son Freddy, 26, and daughter Harriet, a 24-year-old paralegal, as co-directors.
Peter Hoban, 60, and Debbie pictured together. The pair now go on exotic trips like the Abu Dhabi grand prix
Mrs Hoban now lives with her husband, Peter in a sprawling converted grain mill in West Yorkshire
The couple linked an adjoining mill owner’s cottage to the house via a glass spiral staircase
Elder son Jack, 28, resigned as a director in 2019, according to Companies House records.
A Home Office spokesperson said: ‘The number of people arriving in the UK who require accommodation has reached record levels and has put our asylum system under incredible strain.
‘The use of hotels to house asylum seekers is unacceptable – there are currently more than 51,000 asylum seekers in hotels costing the UK taxpayer £6 million a day.
‘The Home Office is committed to making every effort to reduce hotel use and limit the burden on the taxpayer.’
Home Office sources suggested the revenues earned by Calder were mainly from finding bridging hotels for Afghan refugees who arrived following the Taliban takeover in 2021.
It comes as Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, visited Rwanda on the weekend as she tried to restart her stalled plan to send Channel migrants to the country.
Official documents show that Mrs Hoban’s, pictured here enjoying a holiday, company received £20.6m from the Home Office in 2021, increasing to £97m in 2022
The vast and spectacular home was transformed by the couple, with four bedrooms, a swimming pool and jacuzzi and a basement wine cellar
Pictured is the swimming pool and jacuzzi in the couple’s £3million farmhouse
It’s not the first time that Calder has been involved in government business.
In 2020, they were reported to have had secret talks on behalf of the Ministry of Justice to help house up to 2,000 prisoners in a Butlin’s holiday camp in Skegness to ease the jails crisis during the pandemic.
Acting on the MoJ’s behalf, representatives from Calders met with Butlin’s bosses and discussed a £10m scheme to place the low-risk prisoners in the leisure accommodation.
But senior government officials scrapped the plan before it got much further.
MailOnline approached Calder Conferences, but were told ‘We decline to comment.’
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