Asylum Seeker hotel accomodation costs

 The cost of how much the government is spending on hotel accommodation for asylum seekers is in the news this week.  The BBC News made a big thing saying they had fact checked the spend but seem incapable of doing basic maths. 

Here's what they said:

"The average nightly cost per person fell from £162.16 in March 2023 to £118.87 by March 2025, according to BBC Verify's analysis of official data obtained through a Freedom of Information request."

This looks like it is wrong. Not sure what analysis they have done.

Here's the data for the year to December 2024

 
So there were 18,226 asylum seekers housed in hotels.

The Home Office's annual accounts,  show £2.1bn was spent on hotel accommodation for the period April 2024 to March 2025 - there's not data for the same period as above but it's likely the numbers have not changed dramatically.

So we have a hotel bill of £2.1 Billion for 18,226 people.  Dividing these numbers and dividing by 365 days equates to £315.67 per night average.

£315.67 is wildly different to £118.87 per night.  I would say £315 per night is definitely is the more luxurious end of cost per night and not something I would spend except on very special once-in-a-lifetime occasions.  

However  I suspect that these are not luxury hotels and it's the hotel owners (or intermediaries) that are raking the tax payers money.

So either the BBC got it wrong or the government (or the National Statistics Office) hasn't got a clue how many asylum seekers there are or where they are.  To  get to £118.87/night  there would need to be 2.6x as many asylum seekers than they are declaring.

I suspect what the BBC did was divide the Hotel bill by the total number of asylum seekers (52,260) which gives £110 per night which is pretty close to £118.87.  However 34,034 asylum seekers are housed elsewhere which also incur costs eg HMOs and these costs are not included in the £2.1 Billion.

Make your own mind up on what's the real answer.

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4th Nov 2025

Given today's news that the BBC has been found to create fake news (Donald Trump video edited)  it does suggest that the BBC didnt make a simple error in their calculations and that they wanted to alter the narrative about asylum seeker hotel costs.  Personally I still think £118.87 per night per person in a hotel is way too expensive but maybe they think that's acceptable.....