Earlier this year, the government pledged to close 150 hotels by the beginning of May. In the most recent figures available, the number of hotels used to accommodate asylum seekers had decreased from 398 in October 2023 to 277 on 7 April 2024.
“Is this a hotel or a prison?” one asylum seeker asked as he described his living conditions last year. “It was in very bad condition,” Omer told Big Issue at the time. “It was a very crowded building. They didn’t have space for people. There were four bedrooms and five beds in each one. They said someone had to sleep on the floor until they got us an extra bed. Unfortunately, that was me.”
Adam, a Yemeni asylum seeker who became homeless after eviction from an asylum hotel, described isolation and depression during his time in the accommodation.
“Most of the time I locked myself in my room. I suffered depression during the last two years. It was a dark period of my life – I hope one day I will overcome that,” he said.
The use of asylum hotels has been reduced in recent months. In March, the Home Office announced it had closed 100 hotels. Part of the Conservative government’s plan to reduce the use of hotels was “large sites” such as military bases, including Wethersfield and Manston, which cost more than hotels, a report by the National Audit Office found.
Wethersfield was dubbed “quasi-detention” in a report by the Helen Bamber Foundation, which found asylum seekers had set themselves on fire due to poor conditions at the base.
“I have attempted suicide personally because of the conditions of the camp,” said one asylum seeker from Iran.
Before he took up the post, former home secretary James Cleverly said the remote nature and limited transport links of the base made it not “appropriate for asylum accommodation”.
Other non-hotel accommodation includes the Bibby Stockholm barge. The Labour government will stop using the barge once the current contract expires in January 2025.
But residents remain onboard. One former resident described living in a “very, very small” room, with
a bed frame so cold it would wake him in the night if he touched it.
“Mentally, the environment of the room was really bad,” he said. “It was very stressful for me. The room was very, very small. There was no extractor fan at all. In the bathroom there was a small hole, but there was no extractor fan inside the bathroom.”
…and here’s the truth about immigration
Beyond inflammatory headlines and dehumanising rhetoric, statistics show the reality of migration into the UK, how the UK compares with other European countries, and how vital immigrants are to the public services that keep the country running.
- UK net migration in 2023 was 685,000
Of these…
- 154,254 (88%) were offered a safe and legal (humanitarian) route to the UK in the year ending June 2023
- 102,807 people were granted Ukraine Visa and Extension Schemes visas
- 43,368 people were granted Hong Kong BN(O) visas
- 4,671 people granted Family Reunion visas
- 3,408 people resettled and relocated, including 2,570 under Afghan schemes
UK small boat total versus small boats in other European nations
- 29,000 people were detected crossing the English Channel in small boats in 2023, down from 46,000 in 2022
- 157,651 unauthorised arrivals by sea to Italy in 2023
- 56,852 unauthorised arrivals by sea to Spain in 2023
- 856,723 unauthorised arrivals by sea to Greece in 2015, a record. Population of Greece in 2015 was 10.82 million
The UK continues to receive fewer asylum applicants than some other large European countries
- Around 84,000 people applied for asylum in the UK (main applicants and dependents) in 2023
- In Italy, the number of applicants was 136,000
- In Spain, the number of applicants was 162,000
- In France, the number of applicants was 167,000
- In Germany, the number of applicants was 334,000
- Of the roughly 1.2 million people who claimed asylum in the UK and EU-27 in 2023, 7% claimed asylum in the UK
This is on how immigrants played a role in our essential services
- 25,947 visas granted for nurses, year ending March 2023 (out-of-country applications only)
- 57,693 visas granted for care workers, year ending March 2023 (out-of-country applications only)
- 9,159 visas granted for doctors, year ending March 2023 (out-of-country applications only)
- Nearly 1,100 work visas were issued to qualified secondary school teachers in 2023, double the 555 visas issued in 2022 (was 205 in 2021)
- 486 qualified secondary school teachers from Jamaica alone offered visas in 2023
- 265,000 of 1.5 million NHS staff reported a non-British nationality on June 2023, up from 220,000 a year earlier
Sources: The Migration Observatory; UNHCR, Gov.uk; Statista; European Union Agency for Asylum.
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