UK Asylum Claims Hit Record as Those Housed in Hotels Also Rises

(Bloomberg) -- The UK received a record number of asylum claims in the year through June, underscoring the challenge Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government faces in tackling a hot-button issue with voters.

Some 111,084 migrants sought asylum in Britain over the 12-month period, 14% more than the previous year and the highest total in a data series extending back to 1979, according to Home Office statistics released Thursday. 

The number of migrants housed in hotels rose 8% year-on-year to 32,059, according to the figures, which come in a week that local councils around the country vowed to explore legal action to remove those accommodated in their areas, following a court ruling in Epping, near London. In a glimmer of progress, the June figure was down marginally on the total housed in hotels at the end of March. 

The record highlights the crisis faced by Starmer as he seeks to show his government is getting a handle on immigration — both legal and by irregular means — after just over a year in power. Ministers are currently scrabbling to find places to house asylum seekers after a court on Tuesday ruled that the Bell Hotel in Epping should not be used for that purpose as it had not sought the correct planning permissions. That in turn spurred a number of local councils, whose residents object to the use of hotels for asylum accommodation, to promise to explore similar actions. 

The total number of so-called “irregular migrants” coming to the UK on small boats across the English Channel hit 13,340 in the second quarter of the year, up from 6,642 in the previous quarter. The first six months of this year has been a record-breaking period for small boat arrivals, with the total of 19,982 up from 13,489 in the same period of 2024.

Worries about the number of migrants entering the UK sparked protests in the summer of 2024, which escalated into far-right violence as social media users incorrectly stated the murderer of three young girls in Southport, Merseyside, was a migrant. Those protests were revived this summer after an asylum seeker being housed at the hotel in Epping was charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl. He denied the charges in court.

The UK government has been focused on speeding up the processing of asylum claims and “smashing the gangs” of people smugglers facilitating trips across the English Channel on dinghies, but progress so far has been slow. Labour’s own backbench members of Parliament have become increasingly critical, with Graham Stringer telling GB News on Wednesday evening that “we’re not going to smash the gangs.” 

“We’ve got gangs in all our major cities — we haven’t managed to smash them and the idea that we can smash them when they’re operating from the other side of the channel, and in some cases, the other side of the planet, doesn’t bear half a second’s scrutiny,” Stringer said.

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