E-petitions relating to support and accommodation for asylum seekers

Background

Over 111,000 people claimed asylum in the UK in the year ending June 2025, according to the latest Home Office figures. This is “the highest on record (going back to 1979) with almost twice as many (+90%) claimants than in 2021”.

Asylum claims cannot be lodged from abroad and there is no generally available visa for entry to claim asylum. Since the start of 2018, over half (57%) of asylum seekers have arrived by unauthorised means such as small boat, compared to 28% who arrived on a visa issued for work, study or visiting.

In recent years, a substantial backlog of asylum cases has built up. As of 30 June 2025, over 70,000 cases were awaiting an initial decision by the Home Office. Data on pending appeals has been delayed, but as of 31 March 2025 there were 51,000 asylum cases awaiting a hearing before an immigration judge (the figure at time of writing is likely to be higher).

Asylum seekers with a pending claim or appeal are usually entitled to state support. As of 30 June 2025, 106,000 people were receiving asylum support (accommodation and subsistence payments).

Of the 106,000 people receiving asylum support, 32,000 (30%) were in hotel accommodation whilst 71,000 (67%) were in other accommodation, including initial, contingency and dispersal accommodation. The remaining 3% received subsistence payments only.

In 2024/25, the Home Office spent £4bn on asylum support. This includes £2.1bn on hotel accommodation for asylum seekers, which is equivalent to £5.77m per day. This is a reduction of 17% from 2023/24, when the Home Office spent £4.7bn on asylum support, including £3bn (or £8.3m per day) on hotels.

In 2024/25, hotel accommodation accounted for 76% of the annual cost of the Home Office’s asylum contracts despite only housing 35% of people in asylum accommodation, according to the National Audit Office.

Accommodation

The Home Office has a legal duty to provide accommodation to asylum seekers who present as destitute. There is no requirement to provide any particular type of accommodation, but it must be “adequate for the needs” of the person concerned. The courts have discussed what constitutes adequate accommodation: it must ensure “a dignified standard of living, which is adequate for health and is capable of ensuring subsistence” in light of the person’s individual needs.

Asylum accommodation is generally provided in the community rather than in large-scale reception centres. Under the long-standing dispersal policy, asylum seekers are offered accommodation on a no-choice basis across the UK. Dispersal accommodation has traditionally been a mix of furnished flats, houses or rooms in houses of multiple occupation. In recent years, hotels have been added to the mix because demand for dispersal accommodation has outstripped supply, as have a small number of large-scale sites.

There is more information in the Library’s briefing on Asylum support: Accommodation and financial support for asylum seekers.

Financial assistance

People claiming asylum in the UK have no recourse to public funds. This means that they are not eligible for mainstream welfare benefits. Instead, asylum seekers who present as destitute can apply for financial assistance under the asylum support legislation while they are waiting for a decision on their asylum claim. This can be paid while in asylum accommodation, or to people who have sourced their own accommodation but cannot meet their other essential living needs.

The weekly support rate is £49.18 per person for people living in self-catered accommodation or receiving subsistence-only support. People in full-board accommodation receive £9.95 a week. The then Minister for Border Security and Asylum, Dame Angela Eagle, recently wrote to the Home Affairs Committee explaining how these rates are set (PDF).

The weekly amount is credited to a pre-paid debit card which asylum seekers can use to pay for goods or withdraw cash.

Employment

Generally, asylum seekers are not allowed to work while waiting for a decision on their asylum claim. Asylum seekers can apply for permission to work if they have waited for over 12 months for an initial decision on their asylum claim and are not considered responsible for the delay in decision-making. If granted, permission to work as an asylum seeker lasts until the asylum claim has been finally determined.

Asylum seekers given permission to work are usually restricted to taking up jobs on the Home Office’s immigration salary list. Broadly, these are jobs in skilled or professional occupations. Home Office officials have discretion to grant permission to work “outside of the immigration rules” but such grants are expected to be rare.

There have been recent media reports of asylum seekers working without permission, in particular as food delivery drivers.

There is more information in the Library’s briefing on Asylum seekers: the permission to work policy.

Healthcare and other entitlements

Asylum seekers also have free access to the NHS and may be eligible for free prescriptions, dental care, eyesight tests and vouchers for glasses. Children are eligible for 15 hours’ free early years childcare (for children aged between two and five). They have the same entitlement to state education as other children of compulsory school age and may be eligible for free school meals. Asylum seekers may be eligible for other discretionary schemes run by local authorities or other providers, such as concessionary travel on public transport.

Government policy

The government has pledged to tackle unauthorised immigration, reform the asylum system and to stop the use of hotels for asylum accommodation.

Asylum and border security measures

Labour’s 2024 manifesto described how a Labour government would approach border security and the asylum system:

Labour will stop the chaos and go after the criminal gangs who trade in driving this crisis. We will create a new Border Security Command, with hundreds of new investigators, intelligence officers, and cross-border police officers. This will be funded by ending the wasteful Migration and Economic Development partnership with Rwanda. This new Command will work internationally and be supported by new counter-terrorism style powers, to pursue, disrupt, and arrest those responsible for the vile trade. We will seek a new security agreement with the EU to ensure access to real-time intelligence and enable our policing teams to lead joint investigations with their European counterparts.

Labour will turn the page and restore order to the asylum system so that it operates swiftly, firmly, and fairly; and the rules are properly enforced. We will hire additional caseworkers to clear the Conservatives’ backlog and end asylum hotels, saving the taxpayer billions of pounds.

Labour will set up a new returns and enforcement unit, with an additional 1,000 staff, to fast-track removals to safe countries for people who do not have the right to stay here. We will negotiate additional returns arrangements to speed up returns and increase the number of safe countries that failed asylum seekers can swiftly be sent back to. And we will also act upstream, working with international partners to address the humanitarian crises which lead people to flee their homes, and to strengthen support for refugees in their home region.

Further details of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill were included in the King’s Speech 2024 background briefing note, which stated that:

The Bill will enable stronger borders and a properly controlled and managed asylum system by:

• giving the new Border Security Command and wider law enforcement the tools and powers they need to crack down on criminal gangs by building on the success of robust powers to counter terrorism and including stronger powers for law enforcement officers to investigate involvement in organised immigration crime for example in stopping and searching at the border.
• providing a strong deterrent and penalty for criminals involved in organised immigration crime (OIC), ensuring there are stronger penalties in place against a range of OIC and border criminality, including preparatory offences such as enabling the advertising the services of a migrant smuggling group and precursor offences such as relating to the supply of materials needed to facilitate organised crime gangs.
• fixing the broken asylum system, making it more efficient and effective to ensure the rules are properly enforced by ending hotel use through clearing the asylum backlog, ensuring fast-track returns for individuals coming from safe countries and ending the failed and incredibly costly Migration and Economic Development Partnership to redirect money into the Border Security Command.

The bill is currently going through committee stage in the House of Lords. The Library briefings Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill 2024-25 and Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill: Progress of the bill provide a detailed overview and analysis of the bill.

Further legislation is planned to make changes to the asylum system, including fast-track processing of people from countries considered safe.

The government has also announced new enforcement and surveillance measures with France to disrupt people smuggling gangs, a new UK-France ‘one-in, one-out’ pilot scheme, and a “blitz on illegal working to strengthen border security”.

The Home Office’s September 2025 Asylum and immigration – briefing note provides further details of the action the government is taking.

Changes to asylum accommodation

The government has said that it is committed to reducing “the overall cost of asylum accommodation, including ending the use of hotels, by the end of this Parliament”.

The number of asylum hotels has reduced from 400 in summer 2023 to 210 in September 2025, according to the latest Home Office figures. The government states that this has reduced the annual cost by £500m.

The number of asylum seekers in hotels since the peak in September 2023 is as follows:

The Home Office has said that it is “exploring a variety of short-, medium- and longer-term options, in collaboration with other government departments - supporting the commitment to end the use of hotels whilst delivering a more sustainable, flexible system”. Angela Eagle, when still minister for asylum, told the Home Affairs Committee in June 2025 that the department was running a number of pilot schemes. She noted that 2026 break clauses in the existing asylum accommodation contracts represent an opportunity to “evolve away from the system we are in at the moment to something different”.

There have been reports that the government is considering expanding existing large sites, such as Wethersfield Asylum Centre, as well as considering using disused tower blocks, teacher training colleges and former student accommodation (Q369) as part of its plans to end the use of hotels.

The Defence Secretary, John Healey, has also confirmed that he is “looking really hard” at whether military bases could be used to house asylum seekers.

The petitions Stop financial and other support for asylum seekers

The Stop financial and other support for asylum seekers petition urges the government to stop providing support to asylum seekers, arguing that such support “may inadvertently incentivise illegal migration.”

The petition was open between February 2025 and July 2025 and received 427,449 signatures.

In its response to the petition, given on 23 June 2025, the government stated that:

We are determined to tackle illegal migration and end the use of asylum hotels but in the meantime there is a legal requirement to support asylum seekers who would otherwise be living on the streets.

Shut the migrant hotels down now and deport illegal migrants housed there

The Shut the migrant hotels down now and deport illegal migrants housed there petition urges the government to close asylum hotels and to deport the people living in them.

The petition is open until 1 October 2025 and had received 249,646 signatures at the time of writing.

In its response to the petition, given on 23 April 2025, the government stated that:

We are working as fast as possible to close asylum hotels and increase the removal of people with no right to be in the UK, but we inherited an asylum system in chaos, and we cannot fix it overnight.

Commentary

Director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, Dr Madeleine Sumption, has said that reducing the asylum backlog is crucial to the government’s plan for ending the use of asylum hotels:

Reducing the backlog in processing asylum claims is critical to any plan to reduce the use of contingency accommodation like hotels. Although the initial decision backlog is down since Labour came to office, a new backlog has built up in the courts due to appeals against unsuccessful decisions.

The government will be hoping that its enforcement activities and the new returns agreement with France will reduce the number of people applying for asylum and requiring accommodation, but there is no sign of this in the data so far.

Director of Policy for the British Red Cross, Mubeen Bhutta, has welcomed the government’s plans to end the use of asylum hotels by the end of this Parliament:

Housing people seeking asylum in hotels isn't working for anyone. They’re not only hugely expensive, they are completely unsuitable for men, women and children who have endured unimaginable trauma. It is far better for people to be housed in proper homes, where families can be safe, easily access essential services, and integrate into the local community.

We welcome plans to invest more in the asylum system and to clear the backlog. To do this effectively, it's vital that decisions are made correctly the first time. Ultimately, we want to see a system that is fairer and more compassionate to those seeking safety in the UK, and one that, in the long-term, is more sustainable and cost-effective.

The chair of Migration Watch UK, Alp Mehmet, has criticised the government’s plans for tackling illegal immigration, stating:

[…] as the record numbers crossing the Channel in recent days have shown, Keir Starmer’s policies are attracting not deterring. Thousands will continue coming knowing that once they are here, it is highly unlikely they will ever be deported. Get a grip Sir Keir.

The Refugee Council, has said that the use of asylum hotels “is not sustainable” and has suggested that the government should introduce a “one-off scheme” of giving permission to stay for some of those already in the asylum system to “get the system back under control”:

Implementing a scheme to give some of those currently stuck in the system limited leave to stay in the UK would provide this reset. It would enable people who will ultimately remain in the UK to be able to get on with their lives and become full and active members of their communities, finding jobs and contributing. It would allow the Home Office to end the use of hotels by the end of March 2026 while maintaining order and control over the asylum process. And it would allow the Home Office to then get on with ensuring the asylum system is able to operate in a fair, efficient and sustainable way moving forward.

The media campaign manager at the TaxPayers’ Alliance, William Yarwood, has said that the “open-chequebook approach” to asylum support must end:

Spending over a billion pounds a year housing asylum seekers in hotels is indefensible.

Taxpayers were promised this was temporary, yet the bill keeps climbing and the system remains broken.

Ministers must get a grip and end this open-chequebook approach before costs spiral even further.

The Institute for Public Policy Research has stated that “the escalating costs and poor standards of accommodation” for asylum seekers can be “halted and reversed by ending national outsourcing contracts with private companies and instead decentralising budgets and powers to regional bodies […] that can better understand and serve their communities”.

The chair of the Home Affairs Committee, Dame Karen Bradley, has said that if the government succeeds in closing asylum hotels, that there “will still need to be stock of short-term accommodation to deal with unpredictable levels of irregular migration”,

Further reading

Commons Library research briefing CBP-1909, Asylum support: Accommodation and financial support for asylum seekers

Commons Library research briefing CBP-10337, Asylum seekers in the UK: common questions in 2025

Commons Library research briefing CBP-1403, Asylum statistics

Commons Library research briefing CBP-9790, No recourse to public funds

Commons Library research briefing CBP-6847, People from abroad: what benefits can they claim?