Britain Is Not the First Country to Try This

The grand announcement of shared misery is already being widely discussed on the hugely influential British online forum Mumsnet which, while hardly a scientific gauge of British public opinion, offers an entertaining window into middle-class anxieties.

Britain can at least take comfort in not having invented the idea. Germany tried something similar during the migration crisis. Hamburg explicitly pursued what officials called a “fairer distribution” of refugee accommodation across the city, including in wealthier districts. In affluent Blankenese, the authorities approved accommodation for 192 refugees at Björnsonweg.

A local resident challenged the project in court, delaying construction before a settlement allowed it to proceed. Hamburg’s refugee coordinator welcomed the outcome because it meant the district would finally receive its first refugee accommodation.

The principle was stated even more clearly by Hamburg officials during the dispute: they argued that refugee housing should not be absent from particular neighborhoods and defended the project in the name of a fairer distribution across the city.

A Problem That Remains Unsolved

Burnham’s plan is therefore less original than it sounds. Germany got there first: spread the accommodation into richer areas, call it fairness and then discover that the neighbors have opinions of their own.

What is clear is that the British public remains furious about migration. It is currently the country’s number one issue, according to the latest Ipsos Issues Index. In July 2026, 43% of Britons named immigration as an important issue facing the country, putting it ahead of the economy on 30%.

Labour’s plan is to reduce the number of asylum seekers accommodated in hotels. They are doing that by shifting them to homes of multiple occupancy (HMOs), which are usually old family houses turned into multiple small flats. In addition, they are now planning to move asylum seekers into accommodation on old military bases, like the one near Piddington. Yet because they are asylum seekers, they cannot be confined, meaning that they will be able to wander around these areas freely.

That is what upset people in the town of Thetford in Norfolk, where asylum seekers have been housed in HMOs and the government has also proposed using nearby former military barracks. Local residents became angry after suspected asylum seekers were moved into a housing development. The town saw three nights of unrest, during which crowds targeted those properties, forcing the police to evacuate the new inhabitants.

If the government had hoped that moving asylum seekers out of hotels and into other accommodation would reduce tensions, Thetford showed they were wrong. Locals were not angry about losing a local facility, like a hotel. They were worried about the danger of asylum seekers being placed among them. For them, the migration debate is no longer about statistics or policy. It is about who is being moved into the house next door.

It was also a case study in Labour’s failure to understand public anger. Local MP Terry Jermy condemned protesters for destabilizing the community. But mass migration and the repeated failure of governments to control it have been destabilizing British politics and communities for years. The violence in Thetford should not obscure that wider point.

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Equality Does Not Come Cheap

There is another difficulty with Burnham’s redistribution of asylum accommodation: middle-class Britain is more expensive than the places currently carrying the burden. Home Office rent caps effectively price many wealthier areas out of the asylum accommodation market, so ministers are considering raising them.

In other words, extending the system into more affluent neighborhoods in the name of fairness may require taxpayers to pay more for accommodation than they would in cheaper parts of the country. Downing Street accepts the extra cost, but Burnham regards the redistribution as a “point of principle”. Equality, it seems, does not come cheap, particularly when it reaches the property market.

That does not mean moving asylum seekers out of hotels is itself more expensive. Quite the opposite. Private asylum accommodation cost the taxpayer £2.7bn ($3.65bn) in 2024-25, driven largely by the use of hotels. Labour has since moved thousands into cheaper shared accommodation and former military sites: the Home Office puts the average cost at £144 ($195) per person per night in a hotel, compared with £23.25 ($31) in dispersal accommodation.

At the end of March, 97,519 people were receiving asylum support, including 72,768 in non-hotel accommodation. The government has since said it has cut overall asylum support costs by nearly £1bn ($1.35bn).

The Cost of Spreading the Burden

The contradiction lies elsewhere. Moving asylum seekers out of hotels can save taxpayers substantial sums, but the cheapest dispersal accommodation is not necessarily where ministers now want them to live. If the government deliberately expands the system into wealthier areas to achieve a fairer geographical distribution, it may have to raise existing rent caps to do so. The government could therefore save money by replacing hotels while simultaneously paying more than necessary for some of the replacement accommodation.

The proposition, then, is a curious one. Middle-class taxpayers may be asked to pay more so that asylum accommodation can be extended into their neighborhoods, not because those neighborhoods offer the cheapest housing, but because ministers believe the burden should be distributed more evenly. They will help fund that redistribution and live alongside its consequences. Whatever pressures accompany the system, from demands on local services to public unease and social alienation, will be redistributed with it. That is unlikely to make the underlying political problem disappear.

“I do believe all parts of the country need to work . . . to play their part”, Burnham said. However, after years of record asylum spending and an accommodation system that successive governments have struggled to control, voters might reasonably turn the phrase around. The question is no longer simply which parts of the country must “play their part”, but when the politicians elected to run the system and act in the public interest will start playing theirs.