Are 10% of the UK’s asylum seekers being housed in Scotland?

Leaflets from Reform UK landing on doorsteps during the Scottish parliament election campaign have claimed that “Scotland now houses 10% of UK asylum seekers”..

But that’s not correct according to the latest data from the Home Office, which shows that around 6% of asylum seekers receiving some sort of support from the government are housed in Scotland.

Asylum seekers in Scotland made up 6.2% of those receiving accommodation support from the UK government or “being housed” at 31 December 2025, and 6.3% of those receiving any type of support.

There were 6,688 asylum seekers living in Scotland in receipt of support from the UK government at the end of last year—6,416 of whom were receiving accommodation support, and 272 of whom received subsistence only support, meaning the government was providing them with assistance to pay for things like food, but was not providing their accommodation.

Across the UK on the same date, 107,003 asylum seekers were in receipt of government support. 103,426 of these received accommodation support and 3,577 received subsistence only support.

We’ve contacted Reform UK about this claim, and will update this article if we receive a response.

We’ve seen a similar figure of 10% used by the Scottish Refugee Council. It described the figure on its website as a “rule of thumb” for the number of people seeking asylum in the UK who are “dispersed to Scotland”.

When we asked the Scottish Refugee Council about this figure, it told us it uses 10% “as a rough estimate because Scotland’s population is about 10% of the UK’s and this influences how the Home Office allocates dispersals.”

Home Office data shows since 2014, while the proportion of asylum seekers receiving accommodation support housed in Scotland has reached close to 10% (peaking at 9.56% in 2018), it has typically been lower.

The proportion of asylum seekers receiving dispersal accommodation (longer-term temporary accomodation) support in Scotland reached 10%, or rounded up to 10%, between 2018 and 2021, but has not been as high since then. It was 6.5% at the end of last year.

We also contacted the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory about the claim. It told us that 6% is the “more reliable” figure. It also told us that “factors beyond population size, such as housing costs” may affect where asylum seekers are housed.

As at 31 December 2025 Glasgow City was the local authority in the UK housing the second highest number of asylum seekers per 10,000 population at 56.6. Hillingdon in London housed the highest proportion, at 62.4 per 10,000 population.