Madeley Court Hotel is a converted 16th century manor house in the heart of rural Shropshire.

Sitting behind a turreted entrance at the end of a sweeping drive and surrounded by landscaped gardens, the establishment boasts spacious rooms with four-poster beds and a lounge area overlooking a lake. 

High ceilings, exposed timber beams, open fireplaces and original features seem to epitomise period grandeur. Could there, on the face of it at least, be a more idyllic setting?

'We love living here,' said a young man outside. Note: he said 'living' not 'staying'.

The young man, Jasmine Hikami, is from Iraq and he has been sharing a room here with his brother and father for the past four months. They are among up to 300 migrants who have been placed at the historic venue on the outskirts of Telford.

The Madeley Court official website, promising 'superb service and cuisine', suggests the hotel is still open for business for paying guests. It isn't.

A notice in a window, written in Arabic and a small army of security guards patrolling the grounds are tell-tale signs that Madeley Court has, instead, been repurposed as a 'migrant hotel'.

There can't be many who don't believe migrants like 18-year-old Jasmine should, at the very least, be treated humanely – and housed while their claims to remain are processed – even if they have arrived illegally in small boats or in the back of lorries.

Nevertheless, asylum seekers being put up in the seemingly luxurious surroundings of Madeley Court – especially during a cost of living crisis and when public services are under such severe strain – is bound to cause controversy and is an embarrassment for any government keen to be seen to be taking a tough line on immigration.

Hence the reason you are reading about Madeley Court today.

Migrants, including many from Afghanistan, have actually been at the establishment for three years, but because the hotel is in the middle of the country, with few homes or businesses in the immediate vicinity, it has attracted little attention.

All that changed a few days ago when a team of so-called 'citizen journalists' turned up to make a 'documentary' about the migrant influx.

You do not see the faces of the four-strong crew – one of them is hooded and wearing a bandana face mask – which perhaps tells you more about the individuals in question than the people they have come to film. Police were called to the scene but the group left without any trouble and there were no arrests.

Their 15-minute clip about Madeley Court, however, was inflammatory. It was viewed more than 13,000 times (and counting) on YouTube alone as well as being uploaded onto other platforms, resulting in a probable audience running into tens of thousands.

The footage caused a predictable anti-migrant tirade on social media. The full story behind Madeley Court, though, went unreported. 

The truth, despite the apparent grandeur of the building and the beautiful setting (the pictures do not lie), is that few of us would choose to stay at Madeley Court even though the new arrivals, like Jasmine Hikami, are grateful to be there.

Guests who patronised the hotel shortly before migrants moved in around 2021 complained of damp and mould, water-stained ceilings, showers not working properly, chipped baths, dirty, ripped seat covers on chairs, and a putrid smell, among other things, in online reviews.

'My husband & son got sick (vomiting, headaches, allergic eyes and runny nose),' wrote an American tourist on booking site Hotels.com. 'Felt like absolutely toxic place, I'm sure it would be condemned in the US. We couldn't wait to get out and were prepared to forfeit the cost (we had prepaid) but fortunately Hotels.com worked out a refund with the hotel.'

Locals told a similar story: of a once grand hotel, a popular locale for wedding receptions, falling into terrible disrepair because of a lack of investment. Even so – and here is the crux of it – Madeley Court, despite its dilapidated state, is a goldmine for the owners, courtesy of the long-suffering taxpayer.

In the past, brothers Ravi and Sanjay Kathuria of the Talash Hotels Group (THG) have incurred fines and costs of more than £700,000 for multiple breaches of health and safety and fire regulations at other establishments they own or used to own.

Yet, they are still part of a gravy train of outsourcing companies and middlemen making a small fortune from the broken asylum system. This is the wider scandal at the heart of the migrant crisis, whatever opinions you might hold on the issue, which is often forgotten.

There are 49 rooms at Madeley Court and, according to an industry source with experience of the finances involved in the provision of migrant hotel accommodation, the Kathurias would typically receive between £30 and £67 per room per night from private contractor Serco, which was awarded ten-year contracts totalling £1.9 billion by the Home Office back in 2019 to provide asylum seeker housing, or one of its booking agents.

One of the contracts was for the Midlands and the east of England, where Madeley Court is located.

Between £30 and £67 doesn't sound a lot, does it? But as the source explained: 'The owners are guaranteed a fixed income and full occupancy all year and can take out almost all of their costs. They only really have to man reception as Serco's sub-contractors will provide food and security. This is at a time when hotel staffing costs are otherwise going through the roof.'

What does this mean for the Kathurias?

Well, a rate of just £40 per room, represents an income of around £715,000 a year. At £60, the income would be around £1 million.

Remember, this is a run-down hotel which even in its heyday is unlikely to have been anywhere near full capacity all year round.

The old saying 'money for old rope' springs to mind. Both the brothers, who are in their 40s, are directors of company THG No 3 Ltd, which owns Madeley Court. The younger Ravi Kathuria holds '75 per cent or more' of the shares.

The company's most recent filed accounts show shareholder funds – the amount of company assets that belong to shareholders – soared tenfold from £74,840 in 2021, when the hotel opened its doors to migrants, to £804,714 in 2022.

Since November last year, Ravi has also been the sole director and in control of Stoke Rochford Hall, the group's flagship hotel in Lincolnshire, which used to be an asylum hotel, where shareholder funds have similarly rocketed from £84,217 in 2022 to £1,399,638 in 2023.

The money will be rolling in for the foreseeable future.

More than 20,000 illegal migrants have arrived in the country by crossing the English Channel since Labour took power in July, which means 35,000 asylum seekers are now in hotels around the country with a daily cost to the taxpayer of £5.5 million.

It is invariably the less reputable hotels who take the government's '30 pieces of silver' because the most reputable ones, lockdown aside, have no need to.

So, individuals with notorious track records like Alex Langsam and Nicholas van Hoogstraten continue to have their pockets lined with public money like the lesser-known Kathurias.

Langsam is the octogenarian who founded Britannia Hotels, voted the UK's worst hospitality chain for the past 11 years by the consumer group Which? and Hoogstraten is the country's most infamous slum landlord, who has been linked to a string of hotels on the south coast.

Of course, the Kathuria brothers, who started their careers as waiters and cite Richard Branson as an inspiration, live in vastly different circumstances, in impressive, detached homes in the smart suburbs of Coventry.

They bought Madeley Court for an undisclosed sum in 2017. At the time, it was their sixth acquisition in just over a year, bringing the total number of hotels in their portfolio to 13.

'We clearly believe there is opportunity for growth in our recent acquisition,' Sanjay Kathuria said after completing the deal. 'We are very much a hands-on management team and look forward to enhancing and promoting this beautiful historic building and the facilities it has to offer.

'While the ownership has changed . . . the highest standards of service will remain.'

His comments could not be more ironic in the circumstances.

The hotel, offering both the 'facilities of a modern hotel and the ambience of a beautiful manor house in countryside surroundings' in its pomp, needed an immediate upgrade, it was generally agreed.

'The hotel did have a great function room and is in a good location,' said a former business associate. 'The wedding trade was building up but there were some fundamental issues that you would not expect at any such hotel, let alone on your special day.'

Someone who attended a wedding at Madeley Court before the brothers took over spoke of it being 'run-down, lacking the elegance you would expect from a country mansion, with tired, dated furniture and it was freezing cold.'

Few that day could have imagined, however, that it would end up becoming a sanctuary for migrants and a target for Right-wing agitators.

Many will ask why the Talash group is still housing migrants, in light of the company's history.

Stoke Rochford Hall, a Grade I-listed mansion near Grantham, Lincolnshire, another hotel in the Talash portfolio, starting taking in migrants in 2022.

This was despite, two years earlier, the company being fined £220,000 and ordered to pay costs of £32,606 for eight breaches of health and safety regulations.

A routine inspection of the hotel by a council official discovered dangerous exposed cables in the bathroom of one room and in the kitchen as well as a failure to 'implement measures to monitor and control the risk of legionella'.

'These were serious offences,' said the council. 'Improvement notices were repeatedly extended but the company failed to cooperate with council officers who were trying to help them.'

It was not an isolated case.

In 2021, Talash had to pay fines and costs of £429,679 for fire safety breaches at the Falstaff Hotel in Leamington Spa (smoke alarms covered with plastic bags, blocked fire escapes, crumbling walls and ceilings) which has now been sold and renamed. Guests and staff were placed 'at risk of serious injury or even death' as a result of the failings,' Warwick Crown Court was told.

And in 2012, the group was slapped with fines and costs of more than £50,000 after admitting a catalogue of health and safety shortcomings at the now derelict Allesley Hotel in Coventry.

Ravi and Sanjay Kathuria were approached for comment both at work and at home.

A spokesman for Serco, whose contract to accommodate migrants covers those staying but was not responsible for the state of the Talash hotels subject to prosecutions, said: 'Serco has a great deal of experience and strong understanding of market rates, and we are confident that we are paying fair rates for hotels to ensure value for money is achieved.'

Back in Shropshire, there is anger that Madeley Court has become a migrant hotel. 'The hotel owners are clearly getting more money from the Government to house migrants than paying guests,' said Rose, landlady of the All Nations Inn, a few miles from the hotel. 'People around here think it is a dreadful decision.'

Especially when the taxpayer is footing the bill.

Additional reporting: Tim Stewart