Failed asylum seekers appealing against rejected claims cost taxpayers £4k per case

The cost has increased by more than a quarter compared with the previous year, as the number of asylum seekers appealing against rejected claims has also soared.

The number of those waiting to appeal against the rejection of their claims almost doubled from 34,234 in 2024 to 69,670 last year.

However, only a fraction of the appeals were heard at an immigration tribunal.

In the 2024-25 financial year, there were 20,126 asylum appeals heard and decided by immigration and asylum tribunals at a cost of £3,786 each. Less than half of them – at 46 per cent – were successful.

The costs related to the internal administrative bill of hearing appeals, which included the salaries of judges and court staff and running costs of the tribunals.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has set out plans to replace the two-tier appeals system with a new body to streamline decisions, overseen by the Home Office to give the department more control over cases.

A new 24-week deadline will also be introduced for all appeals, although the government has not set out how it intends to meet the target given lack of legal funding.

Since 2019-20, £395million has been spent running immigration and asylum tribunal hearings, according to the data, obtained by the Conservative Party through an FoI request.

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said the figures exposed the cost of the “endless legal merry-go-round” of the asylum system.

It comes in addition to the £24,000 average annual cost of housing each asylum seeker, and the cost incurred by the Home Office for fighting the appeals.

The request also revealed that the cost of providing taxpayer-funded legal aid to asylum seekers appealing against rejected claims rose by 56 per cent in the 2024-25 financial year to reach £6.2 million.

Nearly £30million has been paid out in legal aid for asylum appeals since 2019-20, and with appeals taking an average of 60 weeks to be heard, most asylum seekers live in taxpayer-funded accommodation during this time.

Mr Philp said the figures revealed an asylum system that has “lost all restraint”, and said the Conservative Party would fix the system through its plan to increase the number of deportations to 150,000 a year – tripling the current number of removals.

The party’s plan relies on its pledge to leave the European Convention on Human Rights.

He said: “Taxpayers are burning nearly £80 million a year for an endless legal merry-go-round designed to delay decisions, block removals, and keep illegal immigrants who have no right to be here.

“No one is fooled by tough talk from Labour, as they will never do the hard work needed to tackle the lawfare that blocks removals.”

Nick Timothy, the Shadow Justice Secretary, added: “The courts are being used as a waiting room for illegal immigrants, feeding a growing court backlog and putting an immense burden on taxpayers.

“As long as migrant appeals are unlimited and legal aid is guaranteed, the bill will only keep rising. The Conservatives will shut this system down and replace it with fast, final decisions made by ministers.”

Labour said it had reduced the cost of the asylum system from a peak of £5.4billion a year under the previous Conservative Government in 2023-24, when there were 56,000 migrants in hotels at a cost of nearly £9million per day.

Sir Keir Starmer has pledged to end the use of hotels to house migrants, and the Home Secretary has begun moving migrants on to new military bases, including the former training camp at Crowborough in East Sussex.

The lengthy waiting times are frustrating the government’s efforts to move migrants out of hotels.

There were 36,273 asylum seekers in hotels as of September, while a further 66,200 were in dispersal accommodation such as bedsits and multi-occupancy houses.

It cost an average of £170 per night to house an asylum seeker in a hotel in 2024-25, but only £27 per night in dispersal accommodation.

A Government spokesperson said: “The home secretary has set out the most sweeping reforms on illegal migration in modern times, stripping away incentives drawing people here through unlawful routes and stepping up the return of individuals with no right to remain.

"We are reforming human rights laws and replacing the broken appeals system so we can scale up deportations, and introducing a new legal requirement for a 24-week timeframe for the first tier tribunal to determine asylum appeals by those receiving asylum accommodation support".