MigrationWatchdog

Asylum accommodation in Cheshire West and Chester

England · North West — asylum support snapshot, as at 30 Jun 2026.

654 asylum seekers were in receipt of Home Office asylum support in Cheshire West and Chester as at 30 Jun 2026.

654
asylum seekers supported
as at 30 Jun 2026 · source
652
in dispersal accommodation
as at 30 Jun 2026 · source
2
other or unclassified support
as at 30 Jun 2026 · source

Cheshire West and Chester ranks #44 of 346 UK local authorities with supported asylum seekers, carrying 0.8% of England's supported caseload — 17.5 per 10,000 residents (against the mid-2025 population estimate of 373,951). No contingency accommodation (hotel or otherwise) is recorded here at this snapshot. North West overview → · Compare all authorities →

The last 12 quarters

675030 Sep 202330 Jun 202630 Sep 2023 — 53631 Dec 2023 — 51231 Mar 2024 — 61730 Jun 2024 — 63730 Sep 2024 — 65531 Dec 2024 — 64331 Mar 2025 — 65530 Jun 2025 — 67530 Sep 2025 — 65731 Dec 2025 — 65831 Mar 2026 — 65930 Jun 2026 — 654
People in receipt of Home Office asylum support in Cheshire West and Chester, quarterly snapshots. Asylum seekers in receipt of Home Office support by local authority, year ending June 2026 (Home Office, Immigration system statistics).

Up 22% since 30 Sep 2023.

Where this sits in the record

Everything here comes from the same published accommodation table as the figures above, across the 12 quarters it covers — so it is available for every authority in all four nations, and no figure is combined with one from a different collection.

Highest and lowest recorded

The highest quarter recorded here is 675 (30 Jun 2025) and the lowest 512 (31 Dec 2023). The latest is 654. The series starts at 30 Sep 2023, so an earlier or later extreme would not appear in it.

Rank, then and now

Cheshire West and Chester ranked #66 of 315 authorities with a recorded caseload in 30 Sep 2023, and #44 of 346 now. It has moved up 22 places.

Its own caseload changed by +118 over the same period, against -28,383 across England.

Accommodation mix, against England

Accommodation type in Cheshire West and Chester as a share of its supported population, against England
Accommodation typePeople hereShare hereShare in England
Dispersal accommodation65299.7%72.2%
Contingency accommodation—0%20.1%
— of which hotels—0%18.5%
Initial accommodation—0%1.6%
Other or unclassified20.3%6.1%

Hotels are a subset of contingency accommodation, so the shares do not sum to 100%. Both columns come from the same snapshot of the same table.

Census context (2021)

357,149
usual residents
Census day, 21 March 2021 · source
7.3%
born outside the UK (26,209)
Census day, 21 March 2021 · source
0.6%
cannot speak English well or at all (1,952)
Census day, 21 March 2021 · source

The legal route, locally

Alongside asylum dispersal, Cheshire West and Chester has received 105 people through formal resettlement schemes since 2014 — 3 of them in the last four published quarters.

four quarters to 2026 Q2, and cumulative since 2014 · source

Language in schools

4,356 pupils in Cheshire West and Chester's state-funded schools have a first language known or believed to be other than English — 8.6% of the 50,557 pupils recorded across the three published language categories (2025/26).

A pupil's first language is not immigration status, and this is not a count of migrant children — most pupils with another first language are British citizens. State-funded schools only.

academic year 2025/26 · source

When asylum accommodation ends

8 households were owed a homelessness relief duty in Cheshire West and Chester after being required to leave Home Office asylum accommodation (January to March 2026) — of 164 households owed that duty for any reason. A further 27 were owed a prevention duty for the same reason.

Households, not people. Prevention (threatened with homelessness) and relief (already homeless) are different duties and are never added together here — a household can move from one to the other.

January to March 2026 · source

Ranked nearby

Support counts are a point-in-time snapshot by registered address; contingency sites open and close between quarters. Census figures are from March 2021 and predate arrivals since. Numbers say where the asylum system places people — they say nothing about any individual.

Data as of

Cite this page

Asylum accommodation in Cheshire West and Chester. Migration Watchdog, data as of 2026-09-02.
https://migrationwatchdog.com/local/cheshire-west-and-chester
Underlying figures: UK official statistics, re-published under OGL v3.0 — every figure links to its source on the page.

Sources for this page