Local councils forced to 'pick up the tab' as soaring illegal migration figures cause 165% SURGE in asylum social care costs

New data collated by the Alliance has shown council spending on migrant social care has risen from £299million in 2019/20 to a staggering £744million in 2024/25.

Highlighting the "concerning increase" in the figures, Mr Keck told GB News: "Everybody knows about the amount of money that we're spending on migrants for in particular things like hotels and the weekly credit cards that they get to support themselves, that story is very well known it's in the many, many billions.

"But we became aware that actually local authorities are forced to pick up the tab for a whole range of other services that asylum seekers, children and adults may need, things like access to healthcare, particularly healthcare provisions, translation costs, legal services and all the rest of it.

"We felt it was a story that was being underrepresented, and when we looked into the findings, there's a really concerning increase, and that's placing enormous strain on council budgets."

Asked whether the soaring figures are down to the current migrants require more services or the growing number of migrant arrivals into Britain, Mr Keck confirmed the latter.

He explained: "I think it's really primarily being driven by the massive surge in asylum seekers that we've seen over the last five to 10 years, particularly with the small boats arrivals. So we've seen adult asylum social care increase by 165 per cent in just five years - that's actually down from a peak as well. At one point, it was even higher, up from £50 to £133million.

"Children's social care is a slightly more difficult one to analyse, because previously, council spending on asylum seeker children's social care was just recorded under all children, they've only started to separately record spending on asylum seekers and non-asylum seeking children in the last three years. But that's gone up by 32 per cent already.

"And this is all money coming out of local council budgets, so when your viewers are wandering around their local high streets and noticing the flowerbed that's not being maintained, the potholes are not being filled, they're bins not being collected, part of this is because of the enormous strain of their council budgets by the increasing flow of asylum seekers."

Analysing the figures, GB News host Andrew Pierce despaired at the cost on Kent's council authorities, which was risen to £42million from £10million in just a few years.

Mr Keck responded: "These are enormous bills that are suddenly being landed on the desk of council accountants. Now, some of this is being reimbursed by central Government, but often that comes late, often it's not enough. And councils don't have a choice about this, this is statutory duties, they are legally required to spend this money.

"Again we talk about problems with local democracy and the fact that there are delayed local elections, but when councils are being forced to spend money in this way and they don't have a choice, you have to wonder whether the whole idea of local democracy is a bit of a sham."

He added: "And those Kent residents, those Kent taxpayers, they wanted change. And they demonstrated that with a fairly remarkable shift in the political landscape in Kent with Reform.

"But of course, this council has very, very little control over their spending. Essentially they have to cough up, snd that means £40million is coming straight out of the council coffers to pay for asylum seekers."

Astounded at the costs placed on Kent's councils, Andrew said: "Think of how many potholes that could fix?!"

Of the money spent, City of London households faced the highest per capita costs at £400 per household in 2024/25, followed by Islington at £133 per household.

Meanwhile, the average social care spending on asylum seekers per household across all local authorities in 2024/25 stood at £34.

In a statement, a Government spokesman told the People's Channel: "We don't recognise these figures. The Government has reduced asylum support costs by nearly a billion since the general election.

"The Government is overhauling the broken funding system we have inherited, and made almost £778billion available to councils next year, so that the most deprived communities can benefit."

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