How Asylum Spending Compares to NHS, Housing, and Education Budgets
Numbers in the billions are difficult for anyone to process. To understand what £11.8 billion per year actually means, it helps to compare it to things we use and value every day: NHS treatment, housing, education, and public services.
Important Context
These comparisons are illustrative. Government budgets are not a simple zero-sum game where money taken from one area can be directly reallocated to another. Different departments have ringfenced budgets, multi-year spending commitments, and legal obligations. However, these comparisons help put the scale of asylum spending into a context that is meaningful for taxpayers.
What £11.8 Billion Could Fund
Using official unit costs from NHS England, ONS, and PSSRU/YHEC, here is what £11.8 billion represents in terms of alternative public spending:
120,408 NHS Nurses
for one yearAt a fully loaded cost of £98,000 per year (including salary, employer pension contributions, National Insurance, training, and supervision), £11.8 billion would fund over 120,000 Band 5 nurses. England currently has approximately 300,000 registered nurses in the NHS. This would represent a 40% increase in the nursing workforce.
Source: NHS Employers (2024)
59 Million GP Appointments
per yearAt £200 per consultation (PSSRU/YHEC Unit Costs of Health and Social Care 2023), the annual asylum budget could fund 59 million additional GP appointments. In 2023/24, there were approximately 370 million GP appointments in England. This would add roughly 16% capacity to the system at a time when patients report increasing difficulty getting timely appointments.
Source: PSSRU/YHEC Unit Costs of Health and Social Care (2023)
47,200 Houses
new buildsAt an average build cost of £250,000 per house (ONS Construction Industry Statistics 2025), £11.8 billion could fund the construction of over 47,000 homes. The UK government's target is 300,000 new homes per year, a target it has consistently missed. In 2022/23, approximately 234,000 new homes were completed.
Source: ONS Construction Industry Statistics (2025)
2,360 New Schools
primary schoolsAt an average cost of £5 million per new-build primary school (Department for Education cost benchmarks), the budget could build over 2,300 schools. England has approximately 16,700 primary schools. This context is particularly relevant given the school places pressure in areas receiving large numbers of asylum seekers.
Source: DfE School Building Cost Benchmarks (2024)
The Per-Taxpayer Cost
There were approximately 31.7 million income tax payers in the UK in 2023/24 (HMRC statistics). Dividing the annual asylum cost equally:
£372
Per income tax payer per year
£31 per month, or roughly £1 per day
This means every income tax payer in the UK contributes approximately £1 per day to the asylum accommodation and immigration system. For a household with two earners, this amounts to roughly £744 per year, or £62 per month.
How Other Countries Compare
The UK is not alone in facing high asylum costs. Germany spent approximately €27 billion (£23 billion) on refugee and asylum costs in 2023, while France spent approximately €2.7 billion (£2.3 billion). Per capita, the UK's spending sits between these two major European economies.
However, the UK's cost per asylum seeker is higher than many European counterparts, largely because of the reliance on expensive hotel accommodation rather than purpose-built reception centres that countries like Germany and the Netherlands have invested in.
Sources
- NHS Employers — Pay scales and employment costs (2024)
- PSSRU/YHEC — Unit Costs of Health and Social Care (2023)
- NHS Specialised Commissioning — Paediatric cancer treatment costs (2024)
- ONS — Construction Industry Statistics (2025)
- HMRC — Income Tax liabilities statistics (2023/24)
- Department for Education — School building cost benchmarks (2024)