Asylum accommodation in Sunderland
England · North East — asylum support snapshot, as at 30 Jun 2026.
823 asylum seekers were in receipt of Home Office asylum support in Sunderland as at 30 Jun 2026.
Sunderland ranks #26 of 346 UK local authorities with supported asylum seekers, carrying 1% of England's supported caseload — 28.7 per 10,000 residents (against the mid-2025 population estimate of 287,070). No contingency accommodation (hotel or otherwise) is recorded here at this snapshot. North East overview → · Compare all authorities →
The last 12 quarters
Broadly flat since 30 Sep 2023 (+7%).
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 835 (31 Mar 2025) and the lowest 671 (31 Dec 2023). The latest is 823. The series starts at 30 Sep 2023, so an earlier or later extreme would not appear in it.
Rank, then and now
Sunderland ranked #50 of 315 authorities with a recorded caseload in 30 Sep 2023, and #26 of 346 now. It has moved up 24 places.
Its own caseload changed by +52 over the same period, against -28,383 across England.
Accommodation mix, against England
| Accommodation type | People here | Share here | Share in England |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dispersal accommodation | 818 | 99.4% | 72.2% |
| Contingency accommodation | — | 0% | 20.1% |
| — of which hotels | — | 0% | 18.5% |
| Initial accommodation | — | 0% | 1.6% |
| Other or unclassified | 5 | 0.6% | 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)
Language in schools
3,443 pupils in Sunderland's state-funded schools have a first language known or believed to be other than English — 8.4% of the 41,019 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.
When asylum accommodation ends
24 households were owed a homelessness relief duty in Sunderland after being required to leave Home Office asylum accommodation (January to March 2026) — of 319 households owed that duty for any reason. A further 12 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.
Ranked nearby
- #23 Newcastle upon Tyne 915
- #24 Barnet 878
- #25 Newham 866
- #27 Stockton-on-Tees 822
- #28 Braintree 791
- #29 Brent 789
Data as of
Cite this page
Asylum accommodation in Sunderland. Migration Watchdog, data as of 2026-09-02. https://migrationwatchdog.com/local/sunderland Underlying figures: UK official statistics, re-published under OGL v3.0 — every figure links to its source on the page.
Sources for this page
- Asylum seekers in receipt of Home Office support by local authority, year ending June 2026 (Home Office, Immigration system statistics) — Home Office · as at 30 Jun 2026 · retrieved 2026-09-02
- Population estimates, local authority based (ONS, via Nomis table NM_31_1) — ONS · mid-2025 · retrieved 2026-09-02
- Census 2021 tables TS004 (country of birth) and TS029 (proficiency in English), England and Wales — ONS · Census day, 21 March 2021 · retrieved 2026-09-02