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The number of asylum seekers housed in hotels has risen sharply since Labour came to power as asylum applications hit a record high in 2024, underscoring the challenge facing the UK government as it seeks to cut costs in the system.
Some 38,079 people were being housed temporarily in hotels because of a lack of other Home Office accommodation at the end of December, according to data published by the department on Thursday.
The figure was down from nearly 46,000 the previous year and well below the peak of 56,042 in September 2023. But it was almost 30 per cent higher than the 29,600 people in hotels when Labour won the general election in July 2024.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer vowed to close asylum hotels before winning power by drastically speeding up the processing of asylum claims and slashing the backlog built up under the previous Conservative government.
But the pledge has proved much more challenging than anticipated amid a rise in the number of people arriving in the UK by small boats across the English Channel.
A record 108,000 people claimed asylum in 2024, up 18 per cent on 2023 and higher than the previous peak of 103,000 in 2002, according to the Home Office data.
In the year to September 2024, the UK received the fifth largest number of asylum seekers in the EU.
Immigration minister Angela Eagle conceded last month that the number of asylum hotels in use had risen to 220 from 213 at the time of the election.
Some 109,065 people were in Home Office accommodation by December 2024, up from 106,482 at the same time in 2023, the data showed.
The government’s capacity to slash the use of hotels and drastically cut the backlog of applications will have a knock-on impact on aid received overseas, because a significant chunk of the UK’s Official Development Assistance budget is spent on domestic asylum seekers.
Starmer this week said he would cut the ODA budget from 0.5 per cent of gross national income to 0.3 per cent to fund an increase in defence spending.
This means a much larger proportion of the ODA budget is likely to be taken up by the asylum system in the coming years, unless costs are brought down.
The asylum system cost £5.4bn in 2023-24, up from £4bn in 2022-23, according to Home Office data. Some £4.2bn of the cost last year was covered by the ODA budget.
Separate data from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government on Thursday showed that more than 20,500 households were in receipt of homelessness support after being required to leave asylum accommodation provided by the Home Office in the year to September 2024.
The figure was 2.5 times as many as in the year to September 2023.
