Number in asylum hotels halves in a year as small boat arrivals fall

Andy Burnham following the steps Keir Starmer

However, by June of this year it was closer to 16,000.

The drop, set out in the Home Office migration figures reported by BBC News, comes alongside falls in legal migration arrivals, asylum claims and small boat arrivals.

The Home Office said the figures showed its policies to control migration were having an effect, but that there was still more to do on small boat crossings.

What the asylum hotels figures show

Some 38,000 illegal arrivals were detected in the year to June, 33,000 of them on small boats across the sea from France.

More up-to-date figures show the small boat trend has continued to run lower than last year.

Asylum claims fell to 86,000, down a fifth, with about half of those applications coming from people already legally in the UK rather than arriving by boat.

The number of family members coming to join someone already legally in the country also fell.

Hotel use had climbed alongside the rise in Channel crossings from 2019 and a slowdown in Home Office decisions on which claimants had a genuine right to stay.

One of the first acts of the Starmer government in July 2024 was to order officials to work faster, with a target of ending hotel use within five years, a target now inherited by Andy Burnham, whose first month as prime minister Joe logged in full.

Joe also reported this week that the cost of the asylum system has fallen by nearly £1bn under Labour.

Both sides claim the numbers

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said: "A little over two years into office and the asylum backlog is down, the number of asylum seekers in hotels is falling, illegal working arrests are at record levels, and deportations and returns are up markedly."

She added: "Small boats numbers are also now falling, but we are not complacent and there is more we must do."

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said Labour was "moving illegal immigrants out of hotels and into flats in your building".

He said a Conservative government would deport every illegal immigrant.