Cost of UK asylum system hits record £5.38 billion as backlogs remain

New figures reveal that the UK's asylum system now costs over £5 billion a year, marking the highest level on record.

The Home Office's spending on asylum has seen a significant increase of more than a third, rising from £3.95 billion in 2022/23 to £5.38 billion in 2023/24, according to an analysis by PA news agency of data published on Thursday.

This 36% rise, or £1.43 billion, is the largest total since comparable data was first recorded in 2010/11. It's more than quadruple the equivalent figure for 2020/21 (£1.34 billion) and nearly twelve times the total from a decade ago in 2013/14 (£0.45 billion).

The total includes all Home Office asylum costs, such as direct cash support and accommodation, as well as wider staffing and other related migration and border activity. However, it does not account for the cost of operations launched to intercept Channel crossings by migrants – although the majority of people who arrive in the UK via this route do apply for asylum.

Separate data released on Thursday also highlighted the scale of the asylum backlog, with a total of 133,409 individuals awaiting an initial decision on a claim in the UK at the end of September 2024. This is a 12% increase from 118,882 at the end of June 2024, but a year-on-year decrease of 19% from 165,411 at the end of September 2023.

The figure reached its peak at 175,457 at the end of June 2023, which was the highest since current records began in 2010.

The number of individuals awaiting an initial decision for over six months has climbed to 83,888 at the end of September – a rise from 76,268 at the end of June, yet it marks a 33% decrease from the previous year's total of 124,461. The UK witnessed 99,790 asylum applications in the year leading up to September 2024, showing a minor increase from the 98,926 in the preceding 12 months.

Sir Keir Starmer, addressing a conference at Downing Street, declared: "We must bring the cost of asylum down and we have a manifesto pledge to bring the number of hotels down, to end the use of hotels, which we are driving hard at. The way to do that is to increase the processing of claims."

"Among the reasons that there are so many people in hotels is because, for a long time, the claims weren’t being processed. So more people arriving, none of them getting processed, and an ever-increasing pool of people that then had to be accommodated some way or another. That was completely unsustainable."