A migrant hotel firm run by Britain’s first ‘asylum billionaire’ has made nearly £187million in profits since being handed a lucrative taxpayer-funded contract.
Clearsprings Ready Homes, owned by Essex tycoon Graham King, is one of three companies appointed on a 10-year Home Office deal to provide short-term accommodation for asylum seekers.
The contract runs until September 2029 and is estimated to be worth £7.3billion, having previously been valued at £1billion before a jump in small boat arrivals.
Mr King’s wealth has soared as a direct result of Britain’s ballooning asylum backlog, with the 57-year-old now thought to have amassed a staggering £1.015billion after a 35 per cent rise in his fortune made him Britain’s first asylum hotel billionaire.
The tycoon and his Latvian girlfriend, Lolita Lace, divide their time between a luxury home in the UK and a pad in Monaco, while enjoying lavish holidays to the Caribbean and French Alps.
The former caravan park and disco owner, who grew up in Canvey Island, was first catapulted onto the Sunday Times Rich List last year after cashing in on the small boats boom.
He is now ranked 154th in the 2025 list of the UK’s wealthiest people – rising from 221st place last year when he made his debut on the index with £750 million.
Analysis of its accounts on Companies House shows the company’s profits in the last four years total £186,989,435.
Clearsprings Ready Homes, owned by Graham King (pictured), is one of three companies appointed on a 10-year contract to provide short-term accommodation for asylum seekers
Mr King spends a lot of his time on luxurious holidays with his Latvian girlfriend Lolita Lace (they are pictured together riding horses on the beach)
All the while, asylum seekers have complained of squalid conditions in his hotels, which are allegedly providing ‘inedible’ food and rationing toilet paper.
Charities have now written an open letter to Clearsprings which accuses the firm of housing residents in ‘miserable’ conditions while ‘millions’ of taxpayer money ‘is simply taken in profit by a handful of private companies’.
Taking over hotels to provide supposedly short-term accommodation for asylum seekers has turned Mr King into the largest individual beneficiary of Britain’s broken immigration system.
And with some 33,000 migrants arriving in Britain on small boats this year so far this year, there is no sign his fortunes will turn any time soon.
In 2024, the Mail highlighted how Mr King had used his fortune to rebrand himself as a ‘gentleman racing driver’ while whisking his girlfriend on a string of romantic holidays.
As of last year, he claimed to have travelled 245,029 miles and visited 276 cities around the world.
The businessman’s wealth has grown as a direct result of Britain’s worsening asylum crisis.
Last year saw net migration of 728,000 with more than 108,000 asylum claims – the highest number since records began in 1979 and rising from 91,811 in 2023.
As thousands continue to arrive in small boats, also in record numbers, a backlog of processing claims has led to more than 32,000 asylum seekers being housed in hotels – with tens of thousands more in houses, bedsits and flats.
Yet it appears officials massively got their sums wrong when it comes to estimating the amount of taxpayers money that would be needed to foot the bill.
The cost to the Government of 10-year asylum contracts issued in 2019 has rocketed from an estimated £4.5 billion to £15.3 billion, according to the National Audit Office.
It means that on average the taxpayer will spend £4,191,780 a day on housing asylum seekers over the life of the contracts.
How all the money is being spent appears to remain a mystery even to the Home Office which awarded the contracts to Mr King’s company Clearsprings Ready Homes and two other firms.
Clearsprings is the largest recipient by far after being awarded two 10-year contracts in 2019 which are funded from the foreign aid budget.
It’s been estimated that Clearsprings accounts for one in every £20 spent by the Home Office including on police, fire and other services.
Mr King grew close to Latvian businesswoman Miss Lace, 40, (left) after splitting with his wife Karin
Miss Lace, who acted as team director for the business, celebrated her 40th earlier this year
The firm also signed an extension to its contract with Kent County Council to provide accommodation and support to young asylum seekers and other care leavers.
The Mail previously revealed that the business is now so bloated with Government cash that it has one of the highest revenues per employee of any company in the UK.
Latest Companies House records show the firm made an operating profit of nearly £117million – up from nearly £75million the previous year.
In 2020, Clearsprings made an operating profit of just £763,000.
Bosses including Mr King, who is listed as owning between 25 per cent and 50 per cent of it, were paid dividends of £90million during the year, compared with £57million in the previous 12 months, according to the accounts.
During the year, the number of staff employed grew from 278 to 391 – with its annual turnover amounting to an incredible £4,460,060 per employee.
The accounts disclosed that the figure equated to an operating profit for each employee of £298,880 – compared with £269,377 in the previous year.
And it would seem the future remains bright for the company despite pledges by the Government to move away from migrant hotels.
One entry in the accounts states: ‘Demand for accommodation for asylum seekers including contingency accommodation such as hotels has remained high throughout the year.
‘Political and economic upheavals in many countries have driven a high number of asylum applications within the UK during the year.’
A strategic report noted: ‘Government legislation and policy is designed to reduce the number of asylum applicants arriving in the UK. Some reduction in the numbers accommodated in future is anticipated.’
But it added that the long-term nature of its contracts and ‘pre-agreed rates’ meant risks were ‘minimal’.
In reality, Mr King will have pocketed an even higher proportion of the profits due to him having 75 per cent or more majority control of the company’s parent firm Clearsprings (Management) Ltd.
Despite the massive business operation, Mr King’s firms appear to have very few assets of their own.
Clearsprings owns 16 properties in Wales and the north west largely made up of two up two down Coronation Street-style homes.
The properties were bought for a total of £1,428,450 and are now worth an estimated £2.325 million, according to online valuations.
One home in Oldham bought in 2003 for £27,500 would now fetch an estimated £116,000.
Another home in Manchester bought in the same year for £33,000 is thought to be worth £171,000.
In 2007 and 2008 Mr King’s firm splashed out on 14 properties in Swansea ranging in price from £73,000 to £123,000 according to public documents. All still have mortgages.
The management company also owns a further unnamed property which is worth £3.555 million, having risen by £637,000 in value over the last year.
Mr King grew up in Canvey Island after his father Jack, who had started life as a shed salesman in Romford, moved the family there and bought a failing caravan park from the local council.
He turned it into a mobile home business and Graham and his older brother Jeff spent years working for Jack at the caravan park, called Kings Park, taking over when he retired.
Migrants are brought ashore at Dover yesterday after being intercepted in the Channel
It was sold in 2007 for £32 million.
He moved to a 60-acre listed farmhouse in Chappel, a village near Colchester, with his Austrian-born wife Carin and their two young children, who were both educated at Felsted school where boarding fees range up to £46,755 a year.
He and Carin split years ago and Mr King embarked on a new adventure after meeting Lolita.
Lolita – known as ‘Lolo’ – has also acted as team director as Mr King pursued his passion for fast cars by taking part in Porsche Sprint Challenge events around Europe.
Last May, an Instagram post showed him on the podium spraying champagne as he celebrated victory in a race in the Netherlands.
The Mail has contacted Clearsprings for comment.
