The Department for Health & Social Care has commissioned Interserve to convert the Holiday Inn Heathrow Ariel hotel.

It has been block-booked by the Government for use as an isolation and quarantine facility should it be required.

Once completed it will be used for international visitors to the UK who develop coronavirus symptoms and for Britons who have returned home from countries that have had COVID-19 cases.

Elsewhere, Interserve Construction is converting the Holiday Inn Brent Cross and the Crown Plaza Stockley hotel into isolation units on behalf of the Home Office.

They will accommodate asylum seekers who exhibit symptoms associated with COVID-19.

Mark Buckle, divisional director of Interserve Construction, said: “Interserve Construction and Interserve Engineering Services have considerable experience and strong capabilities in delivering significant NHS facilities across the UK, as evidenced by the work we have done on the new NHS Nightingale Birmingham Hospital.”

Interserve has already converted two other facilities into isolation units on behalf of the NHS: at Arrowe Park Hospital on the Wirral and at a hotel and conference centre at Kents Hill Park in Milton Keynes.

They were used to quarantine British citizens who were evacuated from Wuhan, the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak in China.