Asylum accommodation watch: where it is, against the political map
Outside the council beat, and a measurement of distribution only. This page says where supported asylum seekers and the large military sites are, and which party's MPs represent those places. It cannot say why a site was chosen; that is in selection records this site does not have. It is national context, kept apart from the site's council reporting. Updated weekly from the Home Office's own publications.
As at 30 June 2026, 80,947 people were in receipt of Home Office asylum support across 289 local authorities. 79 per cent of them were in authorities where Labour holds most of the parliamentary seats; Labour holds 65 per cent of Great Britain's seats.
Supported asylum seekers by the politics of the host authority
| Authorities where most seats are held by | Authorities | People supported | Share of people | Party's share of GB seats | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Labour | 141 | 63,653 | 78.6% | 65.0% | |
| No party holds a majority of the seats | 72 | 10,748 | 13.3% | ||
| Conservative | 52 | 4,951 | 6.1% | 19.1% | |
| Liberal Democrat | 21 | 1,399 | 1.7% | 11.4% | |
| Reform UK | 2 | 120 | 0.1% | 0.8% | |
| Not mapped to constituencies | 1 | 76 | 0.1% |
The Home Office's own explanation of this pattern is in its allocation policy and in the history of dispersal: accommodation is procured where it is available and affordable, which has for twenty years meant cities and towns in the north and Midlands, and those places mostly return Labour MPs. The table is consistent with that and says nothing about anyone's motive.
The 25 authorities hosting the most people
| # | Authority | Region | People | Most seats held by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Birmingham | West Midlands | 2,136 | Labour |
| 2 | Liverpool | North West | 1,961 | Labour |
| 3 | Coventry | West Midlands | 1,700 | Labour |
| 4 | Manchester | North West | 1,509 | Labour |
| 5 | Sandwell | West Midlands | 1,467 | Labour |
| 6 | Leeds | Yorkshire and The Humber | 1,365 | Labour |
| 7 | Nottingham | East Midlands | 1,352 | Labour |
| 8 | Leicester | East Midlands | 1,333 | No party holds a majority of the seats |
| 9 | Wigan | North West | 1,193 | Labour |
| 10 | Hillingdon | London | 1,188 | Labour |
| 11 | Hounslow | London | 1,139 | Labour |
| 12 | Derby | East Midlands | 1,127 | Labour |
| 13 | Bradford | Yorkshire and The Humber | 1,097 | Labour |
| 14 | Ealing | London | 1,073 | Labour |
| 15 | Bolton | North West | 1,037 | Labour |
| 16 | Sheffield | Yorkshire and The Humber | 1,034 | Labour |
| 17 | Stoke-on-Trent | West Midlands | 1,021 | Labour |
| 18 | Wolverhampton | West Midlands | 1,018 | Labour |
| 19 | Croydon | London | 1,008 | Labour |
| 20 | Newcastle upon Tyne | North East | 915 | Labour |
| 21 | Barnet | London | 878 | Labour |
| 22 | Newham | London | 866 | Labour |
| 23 | Sunderland | North East | 823 | Labour |
| 24 | Stockton-on-Tees | North East | 822 | Labour |
| 25 | Braintree | East of England | 791 | Conservative |
Every authority: support-by-authority.csv. Source: Home Office, asylum seekers in receipt of support by local authority (Asy_D11), dataset, retrieved 2026-10-06 19:29 UTC, SHA-256 d2207eed53afa18c.
The large military sites
Every site in the Home Office's asylum accommodation at military sites collection (index last updated 9 September 2026), with the constituency each sits in and the party of its MP since July 2024. These are a different process from dispersal: they are chosen from the Ministry of Defence's surplus estate, which is mostly rural, and taken through planning routes in which the council is a consultee.
| Site | Status | Capacity | Planning route | Local authority | Constituency | MP's party (2024) | Factsheet |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MoD Bicester (Site A) Oxfordshire | proposal: feasibility assessments; UCD application consulted 7 to 17 September 2026; no final decision stated | 1256 source | Urgent Crown Development | Cherwell District Council | Bicester and Woodstock | Liberal Democrat (Calum Miller) | 9 September 2026 v2.0 |
| MoD Barnham Suffolk | proposal: feasibility assessments | not stated | Urgent Crown Development | West Suffolk Council | West Suffolk | Conservative (Nick Timothy) | 9 September 2026 v2.0 |
| MoD Linton-on-Ouse North Yorkshire | proposal: feasibility assessments; minimum 3 years stated | not stated | not stated in factsheet | North Yorkshire Council | Wetherby and Easingwold | Conservative (Alec Shelbrooke) | 9 September 2026 v1.0 |
| Crowborough Training Camp East Sussex | operating since 22 January 2026; extension to January 2030 sought | 540 source | Urgent Crown Development (extension) | Wealden District Council | Sussex Weald | Conservative (Nus Ghani) | 9 September 2026 v4.0 |
| Wethersfield Essex | operating since July 2023; extension sought | not stated | Special Development Order (status on factsheet) | Braintree District Council | Braintree | Conservative (James Cleverly) | 9 September 2026 v6.0 |
Sites by MP's party: Conservative 4, Liberal Democrat 1. Five sites is too few to call a pattern either way, and the Ministry of Defence's estate, not the electoral map, decides where a disused barracks is. A new factsheet, a status change or a new version is picked up by the weekly job and the row changes; the previous version stays in the archive with its hash.
What would answer the question this page cannot
Whether electoral geography played any part in choosing a site is in the Home Office's selection records: criteria, longlist, shortlist, comparative assessments and submissions. Those are reachable by a Freedom of Information request, and the Bicester application's own Statement of National Importance is being examined line by line by the sister site trackedchanges.co.uk, together with the Urgent Crown Development guidance and the allocation policy.
Political geography is this site's 2024 results data (Democracy Club, CC BY 4.0) joined to the ministry's constituency-to-authority lookup; an authority with no majority party is shown as such rather than forced into a column. Corrections go in the corrections log.