Additional reporting by Zak Garner-Purkis An investigation by ITV News and the Observer has uncovered evidence of serious flaws in the way a network of hotels and accommodation blocks are run to house asylum seekers. Whistle-blowers have told us how some staff running them are paid below the minimum wage, rostered to work 6 days a week for 12 hours a day, far in excess of the 48-hour weekly limit, and work in breach of their student visas. Some 9,500 asylum seekers are accommodated in re-purposed hotels and apartment blocks, sometimes waiting years for their claims to be processed. The Home Office pays private companies like Clearsprings Ready Homes to help manage these. Clearsprings in turn subcontracts another firm, Stay Belvedere Hotels Ltd to help run some of them.