The Home Office has a statutory obligation to support asylum seekers who would otherwise be left destitute on our streets.

Before an individual can apply for that support, they are required to provide information about their personal circumstances which includes declaring all income, assets, and other forms of support available to them. Entitlement to support is kept under review, and failed asylum seekers are expected to leave the UK.

Because of the historically high number of individuals claiming asylum in the UK in recent years, there have been shortages in available asylum accommodation, and that required the previous government to start taking over hotels for that purpose.

At their peak, in Autumn 2023, more than 400 hotels were in use as asylum accommodation, at a cost of almost £9 million per day. That situation was also exacerbated towards the end of the last government when asylum decision-making fell into steep decline, and the asylum backlog rose accordingly.

As a result, the new Government inherited an asylum system under unprecedented strain, and due to the size of the backlog that has to be cleared, we have been forced to continue with the use of hotels for the time being, although it should be noted that the number in use now is lower than it was before the election and is around half the peak level that was reached in 2023.

However, this Government is absolutely clear that hotel use is not a permanent solution, and we remain determined to end hotel usage entirely, as part of our objective to cut the costs of asylum accommodation.

A key element of this is clearing the asylum backlog. Compared to the last few months of the previous government, when asylum decision making collapsed by more than 70%, we have spent the last nine months doing the opposite, increasing asylum decision making by 52% in the last three months of 2024 alone.

Another key element of ending hotel use is increasing the removal of people who have no right to be in the UK, including failed asylum seekers. After coming to power, this Government reallocated significant additional resource into immigration enforcement and returns, and again, that has delivered significant results.

In our first nine months in office, this Government has ensured the removal of more than 24,000 failed asylum seekers, foreign criminals and other immigration offenders with no right to be in the UK, an 11 per cent increase on the same period a year earlier, and a higher nine-month total than any achieved under the previous government after 2017. Of these returns, 6,781 were asylum-related returns, an increase of almost a quarter compared to the same period twelve months prior.

We will continue working hard to clear the asylum backlog, and remove people with no right to be in the UK, and over time, that will help us to achieve our commitment to end the use of hotels. We cannot achieve that overnight, because the scale of the challenge we inherited was too large, but we are determined to deliver on our pledge, and ensure that these unacceptably high costs are brought to an end.

Home Office