Record number of asylum claims in Labour’s first year but real progress has been made to slash the backlog, as Holly Bancroft and Alicja Hagopian report

Chaos facing Starmer comes after council granted temporary injunction blocking migrants from being housed at The Bell Hotel

Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice urged residents to protest outside more migrant hotels to force councils to take legal action to ban asylum seekers

Though the asylum backlog is at its lowest level since 2021, the government is still housing over 100,000 asylum seekers. A third of these are in hotels, which cost millions a day.

Official government data shows 111,084 people claimed asylum in the year to June, up 14 per cent on the previous 12 months.

Rise comes despite applications being processed much faster than two years ago as backlog falls below 100,000 for first time since 2021

Record number of asylum claims in Labour’s first year but real progress has been made to slash the backlog, as Holly Bancroft and Alicja Hagopian report

Labour has pledged to end the use of hotels to house asylum seekers by the end of this parliament in 2029

The use of asylum hotels has risen under Labour, but the party has pledged to empty them by the next general election

The Government plans to set up a new independent panel focused on asylum appeals to help reduce the backlog of 51,000 asylum appeals.