The dandelion effect

Dispersing asylum seekers without stopping the flow isn't solving the problem

Keir Starmer’s government have been trying to claim credit for closing asylum hotels. You can see why - putting asylum seekers up in hotels is hellishly unpopular. They want to imply that they have solved the asylum problem.

Asylum claims are down a bit in Q1 of 2026. But this parliament is still on course to see the largest number of asylum claims ever. Asylum claims continue to rattle along at about three times the rate we saw in the period from 2005 to 2020:

Labour boast that the asylum backlog is down. But despite waving huge numbers of people through, with grant rates that are high by historical standards, the asylum appeals backlog is up!

It is true that the number of people in hotels is down - but the number in the care of the Home Office hasn’t fallen.

In June 2024 there were 100,995 asylum seekers in Home Office supported accommodation, as of March 2026 there are now 97,519. But Afghan resettlement is counted separately, even though it raises many of the same issues for local communities. In June 2024 there were 28,985 Afghans in Home Office accommodation, as of March 2026 there are now 38,617 (Reg_01).

So we had 129,980 Asylum seekers and Afghans in Summer 2024 and now have more - 136,136

While the use of hotels is down, people are just moving into dispersal accommodation and the numbers on the Afghan resettlement scheme continues to grow:

“Dispersal accommodation” is where the government pays various firms like Serco large sums of money, and they rent housing in suburban areas in which they house people.

So instead of having a few large visible sites, you end up with a much larger number of small sites. As part of this there is a flow from urban areas to the rest of the country. Here is the change in the total number of asylum seekers and people on the Afghan scheme since Labour took office. Places where numbers are down show as red, places where numbers are up are blue.

So for all of the government’s boasting about shutting hotels, for most people in most areas the experience is of an increase in asylum seekers being housed locally.

Since Labour have taken office, the number of asylum seekers in “dispersed accommodation” alone has risen from:

- 3 to 266 in South Kesteven, Lincolnshire

- 5 to 145 in East Staffordshire

- 4 to 198 in Bassetlaw, Nottinghamshire

- 15 to 160 in South Lanarkshire

- 4 to 137 in West Northamptonshire

Rather like blowing on a dandelion, the Home Office are dispersing people all over the country. The government hopes this will make the problem less visible. I think there is every chance that it will backfire, as people are left high and dry in the villages and town suburbs where there is very little social infrastructure to connect to and few people in a similar situation. In certain ways it will make the challenges more noticeable to many people.

That’s not the real problem

The Starmer government has always tried to frame the issue as being about the asylum backlog and the numbers in the care of the Home Office. They have failed even in these terms.

But that isn’t the real issue. You could make the asylum backlog disappear tomorrow by granting everyone asylum. But in the real world you would still have a load of people relying on the taxpayer - and indeed you would encourage more people to come.

Looking, as I have above, at the numbers in Home Office accommodation is really understating the impact of Starmer failing to solve the small boats problem.

There might be a (similar) stock of people being looked after by the Home Office, but a lot of people have flowed into and out of that stock in the meantime.

The Home Office can get people off its books and make the statistics look better by simply waving more people through, and acceptance rates are very high by historical standards.

But the people who are either granted refugee status or simply disappear (because they are not monitored) do not disappear.

Though able to work the employment rate for those who arrive as refugees is low.

So they often remain supported by the taxpayer – the only difference is that they show up in other statistics – in homelessness statistics, social housing, and welfare claims.

Let’s have a look at where they are showing up.

First, they show up in the benefit system.

Between April 2022 and February 2026 the number of people who claimed Universal Credit who were either refugees or on other humanitarian schemes rose from 67,000 to 182,000.

This is not a complete measure of how many people claiming originally came seeking asylum, as those accepted as refugees can later claim naturalisation, at which point they appear in the statistics as UK nationals.

UC accounts for about half of all working age benefit spending, so there will also be people claiming other benefits as well as Universal Credit.

People leaving Home Office accommodation also show up at the door of local councils, presenting as homeless. If local authorities accept them as homeless they are then under a statutory duty to house them.

In 2018/19 there were 3,340 people accepted by councils as homeless (and in need of housing) because they had had to leave Home Office accommodation. By 2025 that had risen more than sixfold, to 21,400. These people will be competing for social housing and temporary housing with other homeless people. These are not the only migrants presenting as homeless, just those who have recently left Home Office accommodation.

In due course with a lag they will also show up in statistics on who is getting social housing. Even in the last four years over 100,000 council houses have gone to non-UK nationals. These are not the people born abroad - only those who are not UK nationals at the point they get their tenancy. Ongoing high numbers of asylum claims are likely to put upward pressure on social housing over the coming years.

Conclusion

The UK government has so far refused to put a figure on the lifetime cost to the taxpayer of accepting an asylum seeker. The Migration Advisory Committee are supposed to be producing some work on this, but we will have to see how cooperative the government are about that.

In the meantime we have to rely on work in other countries. A University of Amsterdam study estimates the net lifetime cost of an asylum immigrant at around £400,000. So if you have 50,000-100,000 people arriving a year you are talking about commitments of £20-40 billion a year. This is serious money (for context £20bn is what we spend on the police in England and Wales).

And there are other costs too. If people arrive illegally with no screening they may be dangerous. I wrote just the other day about the high price we are paying in violent crime.

Ultimately the government needs to stop trying to move the deckchairs around.

We have to stop the flow.

Our ‘Borders Plan’, sets out the changes needed to fix this. This means leaving the ECHR and ECAT, repealing the Human Rights Act, and introducing a total ban on asylum claims for illegal entrants. Until we do these things, the costs are only going to grow.