Increased asylum applications and a growing asylum appeals backlog mean the government has made little progress on its pledge to end the use of asylum hotels, while the last year has seen a large drop in the number of visas issued, new immigration data from the Home Office showed today.
The number of people applying for asylum reached 111,000 in the year ending June 2025, the highest figure since comparable records began in 1979. This resulted in part from an increase in small boat arrivals, who made up 39% of asylum applicants in the same year. New data on asylum claims from people who arrived on study, work, or other visas show that claims from visa holders has increased under the post-Brexit immigration system, reaching 41,100 in year ending June 2025.
Despite the Home Office making a higher-than-average 109,100 substantive decisions on asylum applications for main applicants, the Home Office backlog of initial asylum applications fell by only 18% during Labour’s first term in office, reaching 70,500 applications in the year end June 2025. However, a growing number of cases await the outcome of asylum-related appeals in the courts. In March 2025, 51,000 asylum-related cases were outstanding, up from 27,000 a year before that.
Continued high levels of asylum applications and the backlog in processing asylum claims has undermined Government plans to end the use of hotel accommodation with 32,100 asylum seekers housed in hotels at the end of June 2025, up from 29,600 a year earlier. The number of people in hotels was almost unchanged from March, when it stood at 32,300. Hotel residents made up 30% of people receiving asylum support, the same as in March.
Dr Madeleine Sumption, Director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford said: “Reducing the backlog in processing asylum claims is critical to any plan to reduce the use of contingency accommodation like hotels. Although the initial decision backlog is down since Labour came to office, a new backlog has built up in the courts due to appeals against unsuccessful decisions. The government will be hoping that its enforcement activities and the new returns agreement with France will reduce the number of people applying for asylum and requiring accommodation, but there is no sign of this in the data so far.”
“There are several potential explanations for recent increases in asylum applications, although there isn’t enough evidence to be sure which have been most important. They include the intensification of smuggling activity (especially across the Channel), larger numbers of people claiming asylum after arriving on visas, a larger number of pending and recently refused asylum seekers in Europe. It is hard to know to what extent the repeal of the previous government’s asylum policies has contributed, not least because those policies were never fully implemented and their impact was unclear.”
Weekly small boats data published separately by the Home Office showed roughly 28,000 arrivals so far in 2025. If current trends continue, the total number of small boat arrivals in 2025 is likely to exceed the record for a calendar year of around 45,800 set in 2022. The new “one-in-one-out” arrangement agreed with France last month has seen the first asylum seekers detained ahead of removal back to France, but has not yet seen any removals from the UK.
Nationality breakdowns of small boat arrivals published today cover 2025 to 30 June, and show that Eritrean nationals continued to be the top nationality for the second consecutive quarter. Top nationalities in the second quarter of 2025 were: Eritrean (17%), Afghans (11%), Sudanese (10%), Somalia (10%) and Iran (9%).
While numbers of unauthorised arrivals and asylum claims have increased, legal migration has fallen. After immigration and net migration reached record levels under the previous government, measures were introduced to restrict visas issued to workers, student dependants and the family members of British citizens. These measures have been maintained under the Labour government, which has also proposed further restrictions not yet visible in the data.
Today’s data show the first full year after the previous government’s restrictions were fully implemented, with residence visa grants falling by 403,000, or 32%, in the year ending June 2025 compared to the year ending June 2024 (excluding visit-type visas). The biggest fall was from work migrants and their family members – down by 48%, from 545,000 in the year ending June 2024 to 286,000 in the same period this year. Around 18,000 visas were granted to the family members of international students in the year ending June 2025, a fall of 81% compared to the year ending June 2024.
Dr Ben Brindle, researcher at the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford said: “The sharp fall in visas was possible because migration to the UK had previously been so high. It’s possible we’ll see further declines in the coming months—though probably smaller ones—as the data catches up with more recent restrictions like the closure of the care worker route to overseas recruitment.”
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