MigrationWatchdog

Asylum accommodation in Oldham

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

733 asylum seekers were in receipt of Home Office asylum support in Oldham as at 30 Jun 2026, including 70 in contingency hotels.

733
asylum seekers supported
as at 30 Jun 2026 · source
640
in dispersal accommodation
as at 30 Jun 2026 · source
70
in contingency accommodation
as at 30 Jun 2026 · source
70
of which in hotels
as at 30 Jun 2026 · source
23
other or unclassified support
as at 30 Jun 2026 · source

Oldham ranks #31 of 346 UK local authorities with supported asylum seekers, carrying 0.9% of England's supported caseload — 29.1 per 10,000 residents (against the mid-2025 population estimate of 251,915). North West overview → · Compare all authorities →

The last 12 quarters

856030 Sep 202330 Jun 202630 Sep 2023 — 85631 Dec 2023 — 71731 Mar 2024 — 72130 Jun 2024 — 82930 Sep 2024 — 84331 Dec 2024 — 84131 Mar 2025 — 74030 Jun 2025 — 77930 Sep 2025 — 79531 Dec 2025 — 79631 Mar 2026 — 78130 Jun 2026 — 733
People in receipt of Home Office asylum support in Oldham, quarterly snapshots. Asylum seekers in receipt of Home Office support by local authority, year ending June 2026 (Home Office, Immigration system statistics).

Down 14% 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 856 (30 Sep 2023) and the lowest 717 (31 Dec 2023). The latest is 733. The series starts at 30 Sep 2023, so an earlier or later extreme would not appear in it.

Rank, then and now

Oldham ranked #41 of 315 authorities with a recorded caseload in 30 Sep 2023, and #31 of 346 now. It has moved up 10 places.

Its own caseload changed by -123 over the same period, against -28,383 across England — 0.4% of that national movement.

Accommodation mix, against England

Accommodation type in Oldham as a share of its supported population, against England
Accommodation typePeople hereShare hereShare in England
Dispersal accommodation64087.3%72.2%
Contingency accommodation709.5%20.1%
— of which hotels709.5%18.5%
Initial accommodation—0%1.6%
Other or unclassified233.1%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)

242,088
usual residents
Census day, 21 March 2021 · source
16.6%
born outside the UK (40,263)
Census day, 21 March 2021 · source
3.8%
cannot speak English well or at all (8,893)
Census day, 21 March 2021 · source

Language in schools

14,451 pupils in Oldham's state-funded schools have a first language known or believed to be other than English — 31.6% of the 45,794 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

37 households were owed a homelessness relief duty in Oldham after being required to leave Home Office asylum accommodation (January to March 2026) — of 242 households owed that duty for any reason. A further 7 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 Oldham. Migration Watchdog, data as of 2026-09-02.
https://migrationwatchdog.com/local/oldham
Underlying figures: UK official statistics, re-published under OGL v3.0 — every figure links to its source on the page.

Sources for this page