Local authorities across the UK have seen a notable rise in spending on social care for people seeking asylum.
Under existing laws, councils are responsible for providing adult social care, support for children in asylum-seeking families, and services for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.
A recent analysis by the campaign group TaxPayers’ Alliance shows that reported asylum-related social care expenditure has more than doubled since 2019-20, increasing from £299m to £744m in 2024-25.
Funding from the Home Office partially covers these costs, but councils report this does not always meet full expenditure, with shortfalls met from general budgets.
A Government spokesperson said: 'We don’t recognise these figures. This government has reduced asylum support costs by nearly a billion since the general election and the Home Secretary is taking tough action to fix our broken immigration system — removing incentives that draw people here illegally, scaling up removals, and revoking the legal duty to provide asylum-seeker support.
'The Government is overhauling the broken funding system we inherited and has made almost £78bn available to councils next year so that the most deprived communities benefit.'
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