See more Daily Mail on Google - save us as a Preferred SourceBy GREG HEFFER, POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT Published: 10:36 BST, 20 August 2026 | Updated: 10:40 BST, 20 August 2026
Shabana Mahmood has doubled down on Andy Burnham's plans to send asylum seekers to wealthier areas by saying she wants a 'fair spread' of migrants.The Prime Minister last week vowed to make sure arrivals are not placed only in the 'poorest communities' and insisted more middle-class areas need to 'play their part'.Ms Mahmood, the Home Secretary, said she is targeting a mixed model of asylum accommodation by utilising military sites, former student apartments, bedsits and houses of multiple occupation (HMOs).She added it would take time to 'transition' but would ensure 'no one type of community is bearing the brunt'. The Home Secretary told The Times: 'You've got to get a fair spread and what we are doing with the new model of asylum accommodation and the future of asylum accommodation is think carefully about how you have a fair spread that doesn't end up being in one community or one type of community.'Asked what message she would send to residents next to the new sites who face large numbers of asylum seekers living nearby, Ms Mahmood, who is the MP for Birmingham Ladywood, added: 'In a way it doesn't really matter whether you're in an affluent part of the country or in a more deprived constituency like mine.'A change in the population, the demographic and in the housing in which asylum seekers are often housed and the transient nature of that population does have an impact on communities.'You're talking to someone who's had asylum hotels in my constituency, and lots of dispersal accommodation in my own patch and my own city as well. I know these issues well, I know how residents feel about them.' Shabana Mahmood has doubled down on Andy Burnham's plans to send asylum seekers to wealthier areas by saying she wants a 'fair spread' of migrants
