The Local Government Association (LGA) has raised concerns about plans to introduce a national cap on refugees that is informed by consultation with local authorities.
The Home Office announced on Friday that through the Illegal Migration Act, it planned to limit the number of refugees who resettle in the UK through ‘safe and legal routes’ each year.
A nationwide consultation will seek to understand councils’ ‘capacity’ to accommodate refugees, ‘with a view to the UK taking only as many refugees as local communities can support’.
LGA chair Shaun Davies said although it was right to engage with local government, the association was concerned about councils being asked to commit to numbers of arrivals or propose a cap.
He said: ‘It might be difficult for councils to predict potential arrival numbers across both asylum and resettlement and therefore their capacity to support new arrivals and the additional housing needed.
‘Their local communities may also have differing views on and capacity to support new resettlement routes.’
The Home Office said the cap would be agreed in Parliament and launched in January 2025, with a report laid before Parliament in 2024 to ‘set out what is meant by safe and legal routes, detailing existing routes and any proposed additional ones’.
