With the highest proportion of asylum seekers and refugees in the UK, Crawley is engulfed in a housing crisis and anti-immigration protests
On the ground in the refugee capital of England – podcast
Crawley is used to new faces. As home to Gatwick airport, millions of travellers pass through this postwar new town every year.
Some people get off a plane and stay, like the estimated 3,500 locals who came from the Chagos Islands and started new lives under the flight path. Others are plonked there by the Home Office. Relative to the size of its population, nowhere in the UK has more asylum seekers and supported (ie legal) refugees. At the most recent count, at the end of June, there were 1,729, equating to 1.43% of the town’s 120,000 usual residents.
“It might not sound much,” said Henry Smith, who was the town’s Conservative MP from 2010 until 2024 and defected to Reform UK in September. “But that is actually quite a large number of people when children have to be accommodated in local schools. People will tell you, trying to get a GP appointment, it’s very difficult, because of pressure on local health services. Housing is a real problem.”
