Asylum accommodation costs to triple over 10 years

Fees for decade to 2029 to hit 15.3bn, warns watchdog

- ANAHITA HOSSEIN-POUR HOLLY BANCROFT

The cost of asylum accommodation is expected to more than triple to £15.3bn over 10 years, the public spending watchdog has warned.

The National Audit Office (NAO) said around 110,000 people seeking asylum were housed by the Home Office in December 2024 - a rise of 134 per cent since 2019. Some 38,000 of these live in hotels. Original estimates on the cost totalled £4.5bn for 2019-2029, but the NAO has now revised this up to £15.3bn.

In its report for the home affairs committee, the NAO said the rise was due to the surge in people arriving in the UK by crossing the English Channel and a rise in those previously detained under the Conservative government's Illegal Migration Act 2023 now seeking asylum.

It said those temporarily living in hotels accounted for 35 per cent of all people in asylum accommodation in 2024-25, and for about 76 per cent of the annual cost of contracts - £1.3bn of an estimated £1.7bn.

So far this year, more than 11,500 people have arrived in the UK on a small boat - a record number for the first five months of the year since data was first collected in 2018.