More than 100 people were threatened with eviction from their homes to make way for asylum seekers after companies linked to a prominent GP starting running migrant hotels.
Firms connected to Dr Faisal Maassarani became landlords of Serco hotels in 2022 when asylum applications were almost at a 20-year high.
But soon after a hotel in Seel Street in Liverpool owned by one of the firms was found to be unsuitable, people in one of their Liverpool housing complexes were told they had to move out over “urgent” fire safety issues, unaware that 116 asylum seekers had seemingly been lined up to replace them almost immediately.
Maassarani, whose involvement with one of the firms was hidden behind a complex structure of companies and trusts registered in the Isle of Man, said he had no part in the day-to-day running of the buildings and did not authorise any communication with tenants.
Maassarani operates several GP surgeries in Knowsley and Sefton and in 2009 set up the social isolation charity Care Merseyside.
Between 2021 and 2022, a company he had founded, Schloss Roxburghe Holdings, acquired about £5m of freeholds on buildings that were originally owned by property developer Elliot Lawless before his companies went into administration.
In August 2022, when some of Maassarani’s business associates bought the Waverley Hotel in Whitehaven in Cumbria, Serco moved asylum seekers into it within a week.
In November, one of Maassarani’s companies then spent £3.5m buying the King’s Gap hotel in Hoylake, which had been running as asylum seeker accommodation since 2020.
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At the same time, asylum seekers were moved into the Seel Street hotel as the firms’ relationships with Serco and the Home Office expanded.
And the BBC’s investigations suggest it was the use of that hotel that directly led to dozens of people almost losing their homes in an alleged illegal eviction attempt.
A tenant of Parliament Place in Liverpool told the BBC he came home from work in March 2023 to find a letter from Schloss Roxburghe Holdings (SRH).
Andrew Lewis said he was left in “disbelief” at what the letter said.
The letter told tenants they needed to move out because the building required urgent fire safety works.
Lewis, 47, said: “People were afraid, panicking… and didn’t want to be evicted.”
The IT worker added: “They put it vague enough to make us assume we could come back in again. It wasn’t until someone emailed the management company and said what happens after this four-week period that they said they were going to terminate our leases.
“And that’s when we thought, we’re not standing for this.”
The tenants did not know about plans to move asylum seekers into their homes, nor that the plan had been under discussion for up to three months.
Those the BBC has spoken to also said they did not know that the buy-to-let landlords who owned the flats they lived in had been directly approached by an “agent” of SRH promoting the asylum deal to them.
In February 2023, an email was sent to some of the private landlords of flats in the building telling them a deal with “the United Kingdom Home Office” would give them a guaranteed £435 a month per flat, potentially for up to seven years.
The email said the Home Office had “undertaken a full survey of the building” in December 2022, and had then issued a “heads of terms” for a contract to use it from March 1.
The BBC understands the unsigned and undated “heads of terms” was actually a draft proposal, and that no agreement had been made.
But at the time, the Home Office and Serco were facing pressure from Liverpool City Council about the use of the SRH-owned Seel Street hotel as asylum accommodation because its location in the middle of the city centre’s nightlife district made it unsuitable.
The timing suggests it was likely it was these asylum seekers that were destined to move into Parliament Place.
Liverpool City Council said it had visited the building “informally” in February 2023 “to check room sizes for intended occupancy” and whether the fire alarm system was suitable.
It is understood that not all of the building’s private landlords were told about the plan, and that when some were, they objected to it.
The tenants were then contacted directly by letter by SRH and told they had to move out for fire safety works to take place.
Liverpool City Council said it had never suggested anyone needed to move out of the building.
Lewis, whose own landlord was not aware of the move, said he “100% believed” that the fire safety claims were a ruse to clear the building.
SRH shelved the asylum seeker plan, and was reported in the Liverpool Echo at the time to have withdrawn from the plan when it became clear the “upheaval to tenants was too great”.
The tenants did not have to leave, and, to their knowledge, the fire safety works never took place.
