Northern cities are accommodating thousands of asylum seekers – while areas such as the Cotswolds and New Forest are among several with zero, official figures show.
Analysis of Home Office figures by The i Paper found that 17 local authorities had no asylum seekers receiving government accommodation or financial support as of the end of March.
As well as the Cotswolds and New Forest, they include Hart, in Hampshire, the Malvern Hills and Derbyshire Dales.
While at the other end of the scale, almost 4,000 supported asylum seekers were living in Glasgow, which was followed by other urban cities Birmingham, Liverpool, Coventry, Belfast and Manchester in the UK-wide ranking.
The distribution of asylum seekers throughout the country is coming under renewed scrutiny following Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s suggestion that wealthier areas should take a greater share.
“We cannot have a situation where it’s only the poorest communities in the country that receive all of the dispersal of refugees and asylum seekers,” he told GB News on Tuesday. “I do believe all parts of the country need to work, to play their part.”
While the number of local authorities housing zero asylum seekers has fallen significantly in the past decade, as a result of rising numbers and government policy changes, analysis by the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory found “substantial variation” by region remains.
The North West of England has accommodated the largest share of asylum seekers of any UK region historically and still does today, with Liverpool, Manchester, Wigan, Bolton and Oldham all within the top 30 local authorities.
The share of asylum seekers accommodated relative to the local population is highest in Glasgow, Hyndburn in Lancashire, Braintree in Essex, and Belfast.
Asylum seekers are housed on a “no choice basis” regarding location, and while councils can raise objections to the use of particular properties or areas, they do not have a power of veto.
Dr Nuni Jorgensen, a researcher at the Migration Observatory, said that while a “full dispersal” policy introduced by the Conservative government in 2023 aimed to distribute asylum seekers more fairly based on local population, market forces were still at work.
“It’s probably harder to have a contract with a hotel in central London than in Hillingdon, for example,” she told The i Paper. “It’s about where low-cost housing is.”
Dr Jorgensen said that if the government wants to change the situation, there will be a “trade-off between wanting low-cost accommodation and wanting asylum seekers more evenly distributed across the country”. “There’s no easy answer,” she added.
Concerns about a disproportionate burden on deprived areas of Britain were raised by several councils who gave evidence to a Home Affairs Committee inquiry into asylum accommodation last year.
A report published in October said: “The perception among many local authorities remains that, despite the stated policy of the Home Office to shift to a model based on fairness, accommodation providers are still procuring on the basis of cost, driving the concentration of accommodation in more deprived areas.”
The British government has a legal duty to provide asylum seekers who would otherwise be destitute housing and financial support while their claims are being considered, as a result of policies barring most from working or accessing mainstream benefits.
The Home Office has outsourced much of the asylum accommodation required to private companies who procure spaces in either rented accommodation – such as houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) – or hotels.
The Home Affairs Committee noted that because accommodation providers are paid set rates, if they “can procure accommodation more cheaply, by, for example in cheaper areas, they will make a greater profit”.
But one of the contracted companies, Serco, said that it was harder to house asylum seekers in rural areas because of a shortage of accommodation and necessary support services.
Large swathes of The New Forest, which houses zero asylum seekers, sit within a national park and its housing stock skews towards retirees and second-homers and holidaymakers unlikely to be open to Home Office contractors.
Some of the councils who accommodate zero asylum seekers say they have taken refugees through separate government resettlement schemes, including Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire.
Others said they were not responsible for the decisions of central government. A spokesperson for Mid Ulster District Council in Northern Ireland said: “The allocation of refugees is a direct responsibility of The Home Office with the Northern Ireland Office; councils are not part of this discussion.
“We are aware that the allocation of refugees does take into account several considerations including housing availability and other services.”
Meanwhile, in Scotland’s Shetland Islands, council chief executive Maggie Sandison told The i Paper that the council has “no objection to being part of asylum seeker housing schemes” but has never been approached.
“One of the issues is that Shetland is a very remote community,” she said, noting the 12 hour ferry ride to Aberdeen. “When we took part in the Syrian refugee and Afghan resettlement scheme, there were times we couldn’t meet refugees’ medical needs and they had to be flown to the mainland.”
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