Government efforts to reduce the use of expensive hotel accommodation for asylum seekers have stalled in the face of local opposition and court bottlenecks.
During last year’s election, Labour promised to end the use of hotels by 2029.
But data released on Thursday by the Home Office shows there are more asylum seekers in hotels than when Sir Keir Starmer took office.
As of 30 June this year, there were 32,059 asylum seekers staying in hotels compared with 29,585 in June 2024.
The government has been trying to get more asylum seekers into residential housing, which is much cheaper than hotels, by dispersing them to more locations across the country.
But the arrival of asylum seekers in new areas, and the use of residential housing to accommodate them, has provoked a backlash from residents and local politicians.
This has made it crucial for the government to cut the overall number in need of housing – either by reducing the number of applicants or by processing their claims more quickly.
The data, however, shows that the government is struggling on both fronts.
Effort to reduce hotel use
Both Conservative and Labour governments have sought to decrease reliance on hotel accommodation for asylum seekers due to soaring costs.
The Home Office spent £4.76bn on asylum last year, almost four times as much as it spent in 2020-21 (£1.34bn). Of every £1 spent, 76p went on hotel accommodation alone.
Housing an asylum seeker in a hotel costs around £170 per night, compared with £27 for other types of accommodation, according to estimates by Oxford University’s Migration Observatory.
A policy introduced in 2023, under the Conservatives, sought to reduce reliance on hotels by dispersing asylum seekers more evenly across the country.
Data shows that the policy started having an impact even before it was formally implemented.
In September 2022, 31% of asylum seekers were housed in just ten councils. Three months later, that figure had fallen to 24%.
But Sky News analysis shows that areas which have seen more asylum seekers arriving since then are actually more likely to use hotels – undercutting the purpose of the policy.
And the arrival of asylum seekers in locations across the country has sparked protests by residents and legal action by councils.
You can see how the policy has affected your area using the table below.
Residents and politicians have also raised concerns about the main alternative to hotels – the use of residential housing, including houses in multiple occupation (HMOs).
In her maiden speech to Parliament in May, Reform MP for Runcorn and Helsby Sarah Pochin described HMOs housing asylum seekers as “breeding grounds for organised crime gangs”.
A huge backlog of claims
The fact that the government is being criticised wherever it places asylum seekers suggests that their real problem is the overall number of asylum seekers requiring accommodation.
As of June, that number stood at 102,866, more than twice as high as March 2020 (48,042) and only 14% below the record levels reached in September 2023 (119,010).
The government is required under international law to provide asylum seekers with housing while their claims are being assessed if they would otherwise be “destitute”.
And because the government also forbids asylum seekers from working until their claims are approved, that means they have to provide accommodation for almost all of them.
Since 2020, the number of asylum seekers awaiting a final decision on their claim has more than doubled.
That is partly due to a slowdown in processing asylum claims.
In May 2019, the Conservative government abandoned a target of processing most claims within six months. By March 2020, the share processed within six months fell from 52% to 39%.
“By delaying or not taking decisions, they produced this huge backlog that also put a lot of pressure on the provision of accommodation,” says Professor Nando Sigona of the University of Birmingham.
A rise in asylum applications
The issue was exacerbated by a surge in asylum claims after pandemic restrictions were eased in 2021.
Home Office data shows that the number of decisions made on asylum applications fell during this period and only began to increase significantly in 2023.
That increase in decisions has helped to cut the number of cases awaiting an initial decision over the past year from 85,839 to 70,532.
On Thursday, as the statistics were released, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the government was making progress on the backlog and had reduced it by 18%.
But appeals to these initial decisions are common, and the government is required to house asylum seekers until their appeals are over.
Data from the Ministry of Justice shows that, as of March this year, 50,976 claims were awaiting appeal decisions.
That puts the total backlog at 129,721 cases, up from 119,066 in June last year.
Professor Sigona says that the number of people applying for asylum has risen across Europe in recent years, but that other countries have avoided being obliged to house so many of them by relaxing work requirements.
“In Europe asylum seekers are allowed to work much more rapidly,” says Eleonore Kofman, professor of gender, migration and citizenship at Middlesex University.
Without the right to work, she says, “you kind of lock them into destitution and you have to provide housing for them”.
The government has struggled to reduce small boat arrivals
As well as increasing the processing of asylum claims, the government has sought to reduce the number of claims by reducing small boat crossings.
However, a total of 43,309 people arrived in the UK by small boat during Labour’s first year in office, a 38% increase on the year before. Almost all of them (99%) claimed asylum.
In the year to June, people crossing on small boats accounted for 38% of asylum claims.
The UK requires people to apply for asylum from within the country but does not offer a visa for those wishing to make an application.
This means that most people who want to flee to the UK must come illegally – either by using another type of visa, or by entering irregularly.
On 6 August, a deal between the UK and France took effect, opening up a new route for asylum seekers and a possible way for the government to deter small boat crossings.
Under the agreement, France will accept the return of migrants who arrive in the UK by small boat in exchange for the UK accepting an equivalent number of asylum seekers currently in France.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said that the new policy “sends a message to every migrant currently thinking of paying organised crime gangs to go to the UK that they will be risking their lives and throwing away their money if they get into a small boat.”
Speaking to Sky News on Thursday, director of the Migration Observatory think tank Madeleine Sumption said it remains unclear how many people France will agree to take back.
“If it’s a relatively small, symbolic number… then asylum seekers may just see that there’s one more risk… at the end of an already risky journey and [it’s] something that they’re willing to accept.”
As of Wednesday, 2,561 migrants had arrived in the UK by small boat since the policy took effect.
Additional reporting by Sophia Massam.
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
