The Government is being urged to rethink its asylum system as it races to move migrants out of hotels – which became a focus of flaring tensions over the summer.
Since becoming Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood has pledged to tackle the migrant crisis, which she says is “eroding trust” in politicians and the state.
But the Government is yet to set out clear proposals about how it could quickly end its reliance on hotels for housing asylum seekers.
Kate Wareing, the head of an Oxfordshire housing association, is attempting to convince the Government to empower councils to invest in social housing to accommodate migrants and tackle Britain’s housing crisis at the same time.
The bold new proposals are reportedly under consideration by the Government, but big question marks remain over whether structural housing issues can be overcome.
Where are asylum seekers currently housed?
Almost a third of asylum seekers being housed in the UK in June this year were living in hotels, according to the latest Home Office statistics.
32,059 migrants are living in hotels according to this data, which marks an eight per cent increase on June 2024.
106,075 asylum seekers in total were being housed by the Home Office in June 2025, which is five per cent less than the year before.
The Home Office spent £2.1bn on asylum hotels in the financial year 2024-25, according to its accounts.
Positive messages are seen overlaid on St. George’s flag graffiti at the Crowne Plaza London Heathrow Hotel (Photo: Leon Neal/Getty)Migrants are placed in hotels as part of “contingency accommodation,” which is used when other accommodation is unavailable due to high demand.
Migrants are typically housed in “initial accommodation” if they are unable to support themselves while making an asylum claim, and in “dispersal accommodation” if their request for support from the Government is approved.
But the Government relies on contingency housing when these provisions are full, and hotels make up most of this accommodation.
Ninety three per cent of migrants in contingency accommodation as of June were being housed in hotels.
What are the alternatives to asylum hotels?
Kate Wareing believes that the Government can end its use of asylum hotels by paying councils to buy social housing, according to the BBC.
Under her plans, the Government would pay councils an average of £80,000 to buy and renovate a home which could then be lived in by social housing tenants from the area.
Asylum seekers could then move into the house vacated by these tenants, meaning that the migrants move out of hotels and the local tenants get a freshly renovated home at a cheap rate.
If the Government put £1.75bn into this scheme it could purchase and revamp between 14,000 and 16,000 homes, Wareing claims.
Wareing says that this plan would help British citizens and migrants, as well as enabling councils to think more carefully about where it places asylum seekers to avoid enflaming community tensions.
Colin Parker, a representative of charity Refugee Action, said that these proposals recognise that asylum seekers are being “scapegoated” for a broader housing crisis.
“The current system is terrible, it’s bad for people seeking asylum and for communities,” he said.
What are the drawbacks of these plans?
The plans have been criticised for supposedly offering social housing to migrants over British citizens, but Wareing says that local tenants would have the benefit of moving into newly renovated homes.
Rakib Eshan, a senior fellow at centre-right think tank Policy Exchange, told the BBC that migrants fail to integrate with communities because they “tend to originate from parts of the world which have a very different view when it comes to the treatment of women”.
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But John Perry, policy adviser at the Chartered Institute of Housing, says that these plans would improve integration because migrant housing would not be concentrated in a particular area as with the use of hotels.
He said: “This is a proposal which both is more economical than the use of hotels and is more likely to be accepted by communities.”
The number of houses made available under a potential £1.75bn investment would only address less than half the number of migrants currently being housed in hotels.
But Parker says that the scheme – if it was adopted by the Government – could be accompanied with broader investment in social housing. Housing charity Shelter says that the Government should build 90,000 social homes every year for the next ten years.
What other alternatives are there?
The Government also uses military barracks to house asylum seekers, but experts have warned that these are more expensive than hotels. A report by the National Audit Office found that the Home Office’s use of “large sites” such as barracks will cost £46mn more than hotels.
Perry said that the use of barracks is bad for communities because migrants can feel “imprisoned” and small communities near the sites lack the infrastructure for these populations. Academics at the University of East London and SOAS have urged the Government to encourage more homestay schemes like the Homes for Ukraine programme.
This “radical” option is more widespread in Italy and Germany and could ease pressure on the housing system, they say.
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