The Connaught ranks among the world’s most exclusive hotels, where a suite can command £20,000 a night and its flagship restaurant has earned three Michelin stars.
Yet the Mayfair landmark has now acquired an unwelcome distinction: it has become the latest site of a makeshift camp occupied by homeless migrants.
Our News Outlet has tracked the growth of improvised encampments across central London in recent months. Most recently, we reported that the area around Marks and Spencer’s flagship Oxford Street store had become difficult to navigate at night amid complaints of antisocial behaviour linked to rough sleepers believed to be migrants.
Now, several migrants appear to have established another camp among the luxury boutiques and high-end restaurants surrounding The Connaught, particularly around Mount Street and Carlos Place.
This week, we saw people sleeping in doorways, leaving rubbish behind and apparently using the street as a toilet.
The rough sleepers, believed to be recently arrived migrants, begin gathering around the hotel in the early evening.
A group of migrants have established a new camp outside The Connaught on Mayfair’s Mount Street and Carlos Place
Bentleys pass immaculate Georgian townhouses as groups of sleeping migrants settle on Mount Street
The flats above the Dr Barbara Sturm skincare clinic are valued at £3.7million, while a migrant is living in the shop doorway below
The Connaught is one of the world’s most exclusive hotels, with suites priced at up to £20,000 a night
During the day, as office workers hurry towards Green Park and Marble Arch stations, the rough sleepers remain in the area and appear to rely on begging for income.
Their presence is marked by handwritten cardboard signs. One says: ‘Homeless please help me. God bless you. Thank you.’ Another reads simply: ‘I’m hungry.’
By daylight, Mount Street presents an image of a London few people can afford: Bentleys glide past pristine Georgian townhouses, while designer boutiques display handbags priced at tens of thousands of pounds.
After dark, however, the same stretch takes on a starkly different appearance, with makeshift bedding and rough sleepers lining the pavements.
One man had arranged a bed outside Tanner Krolle, the celebrated luxury leather-goods retailer. Another was lying beside a parked Porsche.
Further along Mount Street, a fashionable mews corner sits beneath striking Edwardian sandstone baroque architecture, beside the Dr Barbara Sturm skincare boutique.
The apartments above the store are worth approximately £3.7million. At street level, however, the shop’s entrance appears to have become a free place to sleep for one migrant.
A local office worker, who alerted Our News Outlet to the area’s emergence as a base for rough sleepers, said the group had been using nearby streets and mews passages as an open-air toilet since the beginning of the month.
The Londoner, who has watched the encampment take shape over the past fortnight, said conditions were already ‘almost as bad as Oxford Street’ and continuing to deteriorate.
‘This is one of the most expensive and exclusive areas in the country, if not in the whole of Europe, yet people are now sleeping in doorways just yards from the Connaught Hotel,’ he said.
‘It seems unreal. I cannot believe they have been allowed to set up here and simply stay.’
He said around 15 people have been sleeping across the patch over recent nights, typically arriving from about 7pm before disappearing again at around 7am.
‘They are sleeping in the area west of Berkeley Square around The Connaught, right in the heart of Mayfair,’ the worker said.
‘Everyone grows up knowing Mayfair as the most expensive property on the Monopoly board so it’s particularly shocking to see it being treated like a slum.
‘You have some of the most expensive hotels, restaurants and homes in London around here and yet people are literally having to step over bedding in the doorways.’
Other famous establishments nearby include Scott’s, the luxury and historic seafood restaurant where advertising guru Charles Saatchi was infamously pictured grasping his then wife Nigella Lawson’s neck in 2013.
Today guests arriving for a dinner reservation would be unable to miss the homeless migrants bedding down for the night.
The contrast between extreme wealth and apparent destitution is captured starkly in Our News Outlet’s photographs taken this week.
But one aspect here is misleading because this destitution is elective: most of those we witnessed here are thought to have actively refused assistance to get them off the streets and into temporary accommodation.
Another local restaurant worker said: ‘There have been attempts to move them on but they don’t want to go.
‘I have seen these people repeatedly urinating and even defecating in the street. They simply go to a quieter corner – one of the mews streets, say – but apart from that small concession to modesty they are perfectly open about what they are doing.
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‘It’s mind boggling when you stop to think where we are – and how inconceivable this would have been just a few years ago. Our Edwardian ancestors would not be able to comprehend what is happening.’
He recalled a recent ‘surreal’ incident: ‘There was this very posh girl, what they used to call a Sloane Ranger.
‘She was walking down Mount Street with a flute of champagne in her hand – which I guess she had cheekily taken with her when they were moving from one bar to another.
‘She was at the head of a group of friends from the same set and she was half turned back talking to some behind her when this guy loomed up in front of her so she almost bumped into him – and he started shouting at her in a foreign language.
‘And she was clearly taken aback. I heard her saying to her friends afterwards “Who are these people?” And it’s a good question because they do behave as if this is their home and that we are intruding on it.
‘I’ve had abuse from them before. If you ask something politely you just get “no English, no English”. But then if you persist they will get lairy and start swearing at you.’
Guests arriving at The Connaught are unable to miss the homeless migrants bedding down for the night just a few yards away
The homeless migrants can be seen camping in doorways, littering and even using the street as a toilet
The worker added: ‘It is ridiculous that this is allowed to go on.’
Another office worker pointed out: ‘If someone was trying to sell a flat around here, imagine bringing prospective buyers along and having to step over people sleeping in the doorway.
‘And it feels like the tip of the iceberg. This is Mayfair. If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere.’
The scenes come just days after Our News Outlet revealed how groups of beggars and rough sleepers had established makeshift sleeping areas along Oxford Street.
There, men were photographed gambling through the night with large bundles of cash outside M&S, while witnesses complained of public urination, defecation, aggressive begging and drinking.
That encampment was said to be cleared each morning before shoppers arrived, with some members of the group moving between Oxford Street, Marble Arch and Park Lane.
A number of the men and women are suspected of pickpocketing during the day.
Some rough sleepers are believed to use their position on the street as a cover to manipulate and even rob passers-by.
Previously we have highlighted other similar camps including a major and very visible cluster of tents on London’s Euston Road as well as groups of homeless delivery riders living in tents and makeshift camps in trendy Shoreditch and north London’s Clissold Park.
Fed-up local residents at these sites have complained of dumped food, rats and human excrement.
But researchers say that across London, numbers of rough sleepers, despite becoming more visible, are showing signs of decline.
Across the capital, outreach teams found 3,959 people sleeping rough between April and June this year – a fall of 10 per cent on the same period in 2025.
Of those, 1,685 were new to the streets, while 680 were classed as living on the streets and a further 1,645 were recorded as intermittent rough sleepers, according to figures from the Combined Homelessness and Information Network.
It is understood that some homeless people in the UK, such as migrants with a precarious immigration status, reject outreach programs and fall outside numbers reported by authorities.
The issue of homelessness has become a political hot potato after Mayor Sadiq Khan pledged during his 2024 re-election campaign to end rough sleeping in the capital.
The Conservatives, who now run Westminster Council, previously took aim at Labour for their failings in cleaning up the homeless issue on Oxford Street.
Disputes over who owns particular stretches of land has led to difficulties in removing disruptive beggars from certain areas.
The Mayfair camp is close to another one outside M&S on Oxford Street, where men were photographed gambling through the night with large bundles of cash
One resident of the central London slum village is pictured using the street as a toilet
Homelessness charities, meanwhile, have warned that rough sleeping remains ‘extremely high by historic standards’ and argue that long-term prevention, housing support and emergency provision are all needed to bring numbers down.
The causes of homelessness are notoriously complex but the single most common trigger is believed to be losing a job at short notice – and with most Britons having only the equivalent of a month’s salary in savings millions of people are in a potentially precarious position.
While those who arrive from overseas without an established support network are even more likely to end up on the streets if work falls through.
Westminster Council and the London Mayor’s Office were contacted for comment, as were all of the businesses mentioned.
