Arabic version: انخفاض عدد طالبي اللجوء في فنادق المملكة المتحدة إلى النصف خلال عام
According to BBC News, the number of asylum seekers housed in hotels while awaiting a Home Office decision fell from more than 32,000 in June 2025 to more than 16,000 by June this year.
The figures also showed falls in legal migration arrivals, asylum claims and small-boat arrivals compared with a year earlier. Some 38,000 illegal arrivals were detected in the year to June, including 33,000 people arriving on small boats from France. More recent figures indicated that small-boat arrivals remained below last year’s level.
Some 86,000 people sought asylum, down a fifth on the previous year. About half of those applications came from people already legally in the UK rather than from people arriving on small boats. The number awaiting an initial asylum decision stood at 40,000, down from a June 2023 peak of 175,000.
The Home Office said its migration-control policies were having an effect, while acknowledging that more needed to be done on small-boat crossings. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said the asylum backlog and hotel use were falling, while deportations and returns had risen. The government’s target is to end hotel use within five years.
Home Office-funded accommodation in houses increased from 65,000 people at the end of 2024 to 69,000 in June. Separately, about 40,000 people were removed from the UK in the year to June 2026, an 8% annual increase. The figures included foreign offenders, visa overstayers and failed asylum applicants.
