Shabana Mahmood has unveiled proposals for a “fairer” approach to housing asylum seekers, despite widespread anger from affected communities.
The plan centres on a “mixed model” of accommodation designed to ensure that “no one type of community is bearing the brunt,” according to the Home Secretary.
Under the new system, asylum seekers would be placed in a variety of settings including homes of multiple occupancy, large former military sites, medium-sized buildings such as disused student accommodation, and HMOs.
The announcement comes amid continued public backlash against proposals to locate large numbers of migrants in specific areas, with residents in several parts of Britain staging protests against the plans.
Ms Mahmood addressed concerns by pointing to her own experience as MP for Birmingham Ladywood, one of the most deprived constituencies in the country.
She told The Times: “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.”
The Home Secretary insisted she understood the anxieties of local populations, adding: “I get it, I understand that these are things that worry people and I get where they’re coming from.
“The people in better off parts of the country, really the issues aren’t that different to people who I represent in my patch.”
She stressed the need to achieve a “fair spread” that avoids concentrating asylum seekers in any single area or type of community.
In Oxfordshire, proposals to accommodate more than 1,000 asylum seekers at a former military base in the village of Piddington have provoked demonstrations from local residents.
Councillor Mike Nixon branded the scheme “illogical” on grounds of both security and expense.
The mixed accommodation model being pursued by Labour encompasses a range of property types, as larger sites such as decommissioned military installations would sit alongside smaller-scale options.
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Ms Mahmood acknowledged that shifting demographics and the temporary nature of asylum seeker populations inevitably affect local areas.
She told The Times: “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.”
The dispersal plans form part of a broader immigration strategy that has seen deportations reach their highest level in a decade.
Home Office statistics show more than 80,000 people have been removed from the UK since July 2024.
Among those expelled were nearly 12,000 foreign national offenders and over 6,000 individuals who had arrived by small boat, with 163 charter flights carrying deportees to destinations across Africa, Asia, Europe and South America.
Around 250 migrants reached British shores in three boats on Monday, while a record 230 people were crammed into one vessel earlier this month.
The boat suffered engine failure shortly after leaving the French coast on Monday morning.
In total, 96 people were rescued and taken to the port of Boulogne-sur-Mer, the French authorities said.
As the boat departed Le Touquet beach, around 30 people were left in the water, including some who were in serious difficulty in the currents, rescuers said, with four people being pulled from the water by helicopter and another six by lifeboat.
The Home Office has also issued a nine-page guidance document informing asylum seekers that rape, domestic abuse and sex with under-16s constitute serious criminal offences in Britain.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp responded by arguing the Government should simply deport illegal migrants rather than attempting to educate them, stating: “This tells us all we need to know about the kind of people illegally entering our country.”
Reform’s home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf dismissed the guidance as a “disgrace”, claiming it demonstrated the government recognises asylum seekers pose a threat.
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey, meanwhile, urged Britain to sign up to the EU’s Migration and Asylum Pact, accusing Nigel Farage and the Conservatives of “breaking our borders with their bad Brexit deal”.
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