Last updated: 16 September 2024

For information about the Illegal Migration Act 2023, see our Legal Update blog here.

What is asylum support?

If you have claimed asylum, and do not have anywhere to live, or have somewhere to live but do not have the money to support yourself, you may be able to get “asylum support”. Depending on your circumstances this can include housing and/or money for your basic living expenses.

Asylum support is provided by the Home Office while your asylum claim is being considered. This is the period while you are having interviews with the Home Office/waiting for a decision on your asylum claim. 

You may hear this kind of support called “NASS support”, named after the department of the Home Office that used to provide the support in the past.

If you have dependants with you (this means someone who is relying on you, like children or a spouse), they will be included when the Home Office provides you with asylum support. 

Unaccompanied children (this means under the age of 18) who seek asylum are not eligible for asylum support and should instead apply for support from social services.

There are different types of asylum support that the Home Office provides, depending on the stage of the asylum process you are in. Asylum support is provided under section 98 (temporary), section 95 (while waiting for an asylum decision) or section 4 (after an asylum claim has been rejected) of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. 

Keep reading this page to find out about each type of support, and which one applies to you.

Destitution

If you did not request asylum support at the port of entry (when you arrived in the UK), you should inform the Home Office if you need housing and/or financial support during your asylum screening interview.  You can read more about the Screening Interview by reading our Toolkit page about it.

To receive asylum support, you will need to prove to the Home Office that you are ‘destitute’.  

Under the legal test (in section 98 and 95), a person is destitute if: 

• They do not have adequate accommodation or any means of obtaining it; or 
• They have adequate accommodation, but cannot meet their other essential living needs.

When considering an application for temporary support under section 98, the Home Office needs to see if that is your situation now.  

If you are applying for support under section 95 or section 4, the Home Office needs to see if you are destitute now or will become so in the next 14 days.

Section 98 support (temporary)

Section 98 support is meant to be temporary, emergency support for people seeking asylum who have applied and are waiting for section 95 support. It is often called “initial accommodation”.

Section 98 support is usually in the form of full-board at a Home Office hostel/hotel. In some places in the UK, it is self-catering (this means food is not provided) and cash is given to the person seeking asylum in order to buy food. 

The Home Office will assess whether it thinks you are destitute/require section 98 emergency support, including initial accommodation. If the Home Office decides that you meet the criteria (this means standards) for initial accommodation, the Home Office should provide this immediately after the screening interview. 

So, if you are asking the Home Office to provide you with accommodation, you should take all your belongings with you to the screening interview. There is no right to appeal a decision from the Home Office if they say that they think you do not need emergency support under section 98. However, if your application is refused you can make another application and explain why the Home Office made a mistake. 

If your application for section 98 support is refused, even though there is no right to appeal, the Asylum Support Appeals Project says: 

If you receive section 98 support, you will then be required to apply for section 95 support. You can do this by contacting Migrant Help.

Your section 98 support will stop: 

• On the day you receive/travel to your section 95 accommodation. You can read more about this below; or 

• If you receive a decision on your asylum claim from the Home Office (either a refusal or a grant of status). You can read more about asylum decisions here. 

To learn more about how to apply for section 98 support, read this fact sheet by the Asylum Support Appeals Project here.

Section 95 support

Section 95 support will be granted after some days, weeks, or sometimes months in initial accommodation under section 98. 

If you need housing support from the Home Office, under section 95 you will be taken to new accommodation, usually a flat or shared house, somewhere else in the UK. This is called ‘dispersal’. If you do not need housing but instead only need a weekly allowance from the Home Office, read the section below on ‘subsistence only’ section 95 support.

In June 2023, the Home Office confirmed that you do not need to have had an asylum screening interview before you make an application for section 95 support. 

Dispersal is a government policy that was introduced to spread the cost of providing asylum support to local authorities across the UK. Due to dispersal, you do not have a choice about where in the UK you are housed under Home Office accommodation. You can be dispersed to anywhere in the UK.

Financial support

Section 95 support includes housing and/or £49.18 per week for each person in self-catered accommodation. For people in accommodation that is catered (this means food is provided), they receive  £8.86 allowance per week. Asylum support rates are often changed by the Home Office. You can check the Home Office website for the most recent rates here.

ASPEN cards

You will receive instructions on how to receive your money, which will be paid through a card called an Aspen card. This can be used like a debit card, to withdraw money from cash machines or to pay for items in shops.

The Home Office are able to track the use of Aspen cards and in some cases have stopped people’s support when they have seen that people used them in places away from their dispersal city/town of residence. You can read more about this by clicking here.

From February 2025, there will be a new ASPEN card provider. This means that around 10,000 ASPEN cards issued under the current contract are approaching their expiry date. Each card is valid for 3 years, and the earliest were issued in April 2021). The Home Office is sending out new cards with PINs. The existing card will remain active until you call the IVR helpline (0800 246 1327) to activate your new card. When you call, you will need to select the correct language option. To retrieve your PIN number and activate your new card, you will need to provide the new ASPEN card number (16 digits) by typing it out using the keypad, and also your date of birth.

Section 95 support will stop if:

• If your asylum claim is refused and you become “appeal rights exhausted”, section 95 support will stop after 21 days. There is no right of appeal if this happens. However, you may be eligible for section 4 support. Read the section 4 part below to find out more. If you have children under the age of 18 at the point that your asylum claim is refused, your section 95 should not stop. Contact Migrant Help or an asylum support charity if this happens to you.

• If the Home Office grants you leave to remain in the UK (refugee status), your section 95 support will end after 28 days. This is because you will be allowed to work and to claim mainstream benefits. 

To learn more about what happens after you have been granted asylum, read the Migration Justice ‘Refugee Transition Guide’. The guide is available in English, Arabic, Farsi, Somali, and Tigrinya.  To learn more about section 95 support, read this fact sheet by the Asylum Support Appeals Project here.

Subsistence-only Section 95 support (subs-only)

If you have a friend, family member, or community you can stay with long term, you can ask the Home Office to just provide you with money for basic living expenses. This is known as “subsistence-only” or “subs-only” asylum support. If you apply for this kind of support, you will not be dispersed as you will be accommodated by your friend, family or community member instead. It is important to agree with the family member or friend that you can stay for the duration of your asylum claim if you want to apply for subs-only. 

To apply for subs-only support, you will need to provide either a tenancy agreement or a utility bill. The evidence has to be dated within the last 3 months. If you see both forms of evidence being requested, you or your support worker can raise this with Migrant Help.

When considering an application for subs-only asylum support, the Home Office can refuse the application if you did not claim asylum “as soon as reasonably practical” after entering the UK. This period is usually considered to be three days. This is known as a Section 55 decision, named after the law that gives the Home Office the power to do this. The Home Office should not make a Section 55 decision if you would be made street homeless without asylum support. If you have applied for subs-only support, the Home Office can argue that your human rights will not be breached by a Section 55 decision as you will not be made homeless (because you must have alternative accommodation, otherwise you would be applying for accommodation as well). In some cases, you will be invited to a Section 55 interview at the Home Office, where they will ask you questions about how you supported yourself since arriving in the UK.

You can also apply for accommodation only from the Home Office, if friends and family can provide you with food or you have a low income, though this situation is quite unusual.  

Allocation of accommodation

Many people in asylum accommodation are housed in hotels. The Home Office increased the number of people being housed in hotels during the COVID-19 pandemic, because although the number of asylum claims grew, decisions were being made slowly (and courts were also shut down for a period of time), so people were stuck in the system for longer instead of being able to move on.  

The Home Office has been pressured to stop hotel use because of the negative short- and long term impacts this has upon people seeking asylum. It is not acceptable for people (adults, children and families) to be living in cramped conditions in conditions that were not intended for long term use. The best way to solve the issue is to ensure efficient decision making at the Home Office, so that claims are decided quickly and people are able to move on from asylum accommodation within a reasonable time.

The Home Office has also been pressured to end the use of hotels due to the expense – currently, over 51,000 people are being housed in hotels, which is costing the government around £6 million – £8 million daily. 

The Home Office has chosen to address this issue by closing down hotels (without a very clear plan for what is to happen to the people being housed in them), and through the use of ‘non-detained accommodation’ in buildings like ex-army barracks, and even on a barge docked on the coast of Portland.    

The Home Office believes they can save on the cost of asylum housing, at the expense of the safety and isolation of people seeking asylum. 

If you have concerns about the appropriateness of your accommodation, you can raise your concerns with Migrant Help. It is a good idea to take a look at the Home Office ‘Allocation of asylum accommodation’ guidance, especially the sections called ‘Typical request scenarios’ and ‘Suitability criteria’. These sections outline what considerations the Home Office will or will not take into account when you make a complaint.

Closure of hotels

As a result of the issues outlined above, the Home Office has started the process of shutting down asylum accommodation in hotels. The closure plans were announced prior to the 2024 General Election, so it is still unclear what approach the new government will be taking to this issue. 

The Home Office’s ‘exit summary’ publication states the following: 

“Residents currently accommodated in the hotels we will be exiting will be moving to other parts of our asylum estate. They will be notified a minimum of 5 days in advance and moved by the Home Office in line with our existing contractual requirements with our providers. We are providing additional resource[s] to work with our accommodation providers and local partners to manage this process and minimise disruption, particularly on families.”

You can read the full plan here. 

Non-detained accommodation (Wethersfield, Scampton, Napier barracks)

In response to the asylum hotel accommodation issue, the Home Office started using what it calls ‘large sites’ as alternative forms of accommodation to ‘limit the burden on the taxpayer’ and fulfil its duty to support people seeking asylum who would otherwise be destitute.  

In reality, these large sites are actually ex-army barracks or former units used by the Ministry of Defense. The sites are Napier Barracks and Wethersfield.

On 5 September 2024, the government announced that the Scampton site would be closed down due to massive costs, despite never having housed anyone seeking asylum. You can read the full statement here.  

Though these sites are meant to be for temporary accommodation, the men housed there are often stuck in limbo for many months, and experience isolation and a deterioration of their mental and physical health. The Home Office says:

“Wethersfield provides adequate and functional accommodation for asylum seekers and is designed to be as self-sufficient as possible, helping to minimise the impact on local communities and services.”

Contrary to this, the dangers and difficulties of being housed in Wethersfield were outlined through first-hand evidence in a report published by Humans for Rights Network and Helen Bamber Foundation entitled ‘Ghettoised and traumatised: the experiences of men held in quasi-detention in Wethersfield’ in December 2023.

Vessels (Bibby Stockholm barge)

The Home Office has announced that the contract for the Bibby Stockholm Barge to be used as asylum accommodation will not be renewed when it expires in January 2025. 

This is welcome news. However, waiting until January 2025 to move individuals from the barge  is unacceptable. The current living conditions on the barge continue to pose significant humanitarian and health concerns. Delaying the relocation only prolongs the (mental, physical, and even fatal) distress and suffering of those housed there.

We have published everything we know about the Bibby Stockholm barge in a Legal Update blog. 

If you or someone you know is housed or has been informed that they will be moved onto the Bibby Stockholm barge, you can take these steps: 

• The Home Office has an Allocation of Accommodation Policy, which lists the criteria which would make an individual unsuitable to be moved onto the barge. Some of the criteria includes: disability, medical treatment and family ties. The suitability criteria is mentioned in the policy from page 15 onwards.
• The Home Office has a Failure to Travel to Bibby Stockholm Vessel guidance document which outlines the procedure for notifying or moving someone onto the barge, and how to dispute a notice for being moved onto the barge. If someone receives a notice to  be moved onto Bibby, they will have 5 days to make representations (this is a letter outlining why they should not be moved onto the barge, along with supporting evidence – the more evidence, the better). You can read more about this from page 6 of the guidance document. 
• If you receive a notice to be moved onto the Bibby Barge, and you have a lawyer, you should ask the lawyer to write a Pre-Action Protocol letter (this is a legal letter) to the Home Office to challenge the move. 
• If you or someone you know have been moved to the barge, you can message Care4Calais by sending a WhatsApp message with your name and that you are on the Bibby Barge to this number: +447519773268. Please note that Care4Calais can only help with the accommodation issue, not anything related to asylum claims. 
• Portland Global Friendship Group provides destitution support locally to those who are on the barge, and they run events and activities for those on the barge five days a week. They are helping to connect the men on the barge with activities or volunteering opportunities in the local community, too. You can contact them on: +44 7495 194611 and you can donate to support them here.
• Migrants Organise have drafted a guide to challenging a notice to be moved onto the barge which you can access and download here.

The effect of work or income upon asylum support

Most people who have claimed asylum in the UK are initially not allowed to work. This can be really difficult because it feels like you cannot move on with your life, and you cannot earn your own money whilst waiting for a decision from the Home Office. 

However, the immigration rules allow for people seeking asylum to request permission to work if you have been waiting for more than 12 months on your asylum claim “through no fault of your own” (for example, a Home Office delay in giving you a decision). This may be 12 months after initially claiming asylum, or 12 months after submitting further submissions to be considered as a fresh claim. You can read more about fresh claims below. 

Almost everybody granted permission to work under this policy is only allowed to work in a job on the Immigration Salary List. This list replaced the shortage occupation list in April 2024. 

If you receive permission to work, this will not in itself affect your asylum support. 

However, if you start working and have an income (this means to earn money), you will have a legal duty to notify the Home Office. The Home Office will then review your situation to see whether or not you are still considered ‘destitute’. The outcome of this will depend on your specific situation. 

The Asylum Support Appeals Project published a simple guide outlining the impact of income upon asylum support, including why this issue has emerged, who it could impact, and how to assess if someone is eligible for support even if they have an income. Read the report below to learn more.

The Inadmissibility Rules and asylum support

In January 2021, the UK government introduced new rules through which they can decide that an asylum claim is “inadmissible” if they established a connection to a ‘safe third country’ on their way to the UK. This means that the UK will try not to consider that person’s asylum claim in the UK. These rules replace the Dublin Regulations, which no longer operate in the UK after Brexit. 

If the Home Office finds that it needs to consider whether or not your claim should be deemed ‘inadmissible’, you will receive a Notice of Intent letter. Importantly, this is not the same as receiving a decision of inadmissibility. It is simply a notification to let you know that the Third Country Unit of the Home Office is considering whether or not your claim is inadmissible. At this stage, no formal decision on inadmissibility has been made yet. To see an example of a Notice of Intent letter, have a read of page 30 of the Home Office guidance on inadmissibility here. 

While your claim is being considered under these rules, your asylum claim will not move forward in the UK. 

Importantly, if you receive a Notice of Intent and your asylum claim is paused, you will still receive section 95 or section 98 support. It will not be stopped. 

However, if you receive a decision of inadmissibility, section 95 or section 98 support will be stopped. You would still be able to apply for support under section 4 if you meet the requirements (which are listed below in the section 4 part of this page). 

To learn more about how the Inadmissibility Rules might affect your asylum support, you can read the guidance for Home Office caseworkers (specifically pages 9-10 of the guidance) here.

Appealing a refusal of asylum support

If your application for Section 95 asylum support is refused by the Home Office, you have the right to appeal this decision at the Asylum Support section of the First-tier Tribunal.

You can read about appealing an asylum support refusal in the resources provided by the Asylum Support Appeals Project here.

Legal aid is only available for appealing this decision if you applied for both accommodation and financial support – legal aid is not available for appealing a negative decision on a “subs-only” asylum support application. You can learn more about Legal Aid by reading our Toolkit page. 

Section 4 support and fresh claims

Section 4 support is a form of support for some people whose asylum claims have been refused and are considered to be “appeal rights exhausted”. You can learn more about being appeal rights exhausted in our Toolkit. 

Section 4 support is made up of accommodation and money on an an Aspen card. Like dispersal under section 95, you will not have a choice about where the accommodation is located.

To receive this type of support, you need to be able to show that you are destitute (see the test outlined in the destitution section above) and that one or more of the following situations applies to you:

• that you are taking all reasonable steps to leave the UK or facilitate your departure from the UK but there are barriers or delays out of your control that prevent you leaving
• that you are unable to leave the UK because you are physically or medically unable to travel. This includes women who are pregnant and are in about the last six weeks of their pregnancy, or in the first six weeks after giving birth
• that the Home Office accepts that there is “no viable route of return” to your country of origin. This is a very unusual situation, but could apply for example, if you have received a decision of inadmissibility
• that you have been granted permission to proceed with an application for a judicial review of the decision on your asylum claim
• that the provision of section 4 support is necessary to avoid breaching your human rights

It is this last category (that provision of section 4 is necessary to avoid breaching your human rights) that is likely to apply if you have submitted further submissions to the Home Office and are asking them to consider them as a fresh claim. To learn more about fresh claims, read our Toolkit page.

Section 4 support is only for while you wait for the Home Office to decide if they view your further submissions as a fresh claim. If the Home Office accepts that your further submissions pass the “fresh claims test” but have not made a decision on your actual fresh claim, you may be eligible for Section 95 support again.

If you receive Section 4 support as a result of one of the other listed categories, the Home Office will ‘review’ your support every few months, and you may be required to provide evidence that you remain eligible for this support. It is important to keep documents about your situation to submit to the Home Office when requested.

To learn more about Section 4 support, take a look at the Asylum Support Appeals Project’s useful fact sheets by clicking here.

Other types of support

Section 17 support

You may be entitled to accommodation and financial support from the social services department of your local government authority if you have a serious illness, physical disability, learning disability, mental health problems or frailty because of old age, or if someone in your family has any of these. This is called Section 17 support, because it comes from section 17 of the Children Act 1989. 

The local authority should conduct what is called a Community Care Assessment to decide what support you need.

You can read more about Section 17 support by looking at the resources on the Project 17 website by clicking here. 

Hackney Migrant Centre also published a guide to Section 17 support. You can access it by clicking here. 

Unaccompanied asylum-seeking children will also be the responsibility of the local authority (through social services). You can find out more about this on the Migrant Children’s Project website here.

Schedule 10 support

If you are not eligible for or are unable to access other asylum support, like sections 98, 95 or even section 4 support, you may be able to access Schedule 10 support under schedule 10 of the Immigration Act 2016.

Schedule 10 support is available in exceptional circumstances to a person who is on immigration bail (either just about to leave detention or already in the community) and who is unable to access support and does not have immigration status in the UK. Crucially, it is not available to families. Families should instead look into Section 17 support (please see above).  

The NRPF network also has a detailed guide about Schedule 10 support which you can access here. 

After a grant of refugee status

After receiving your refugee status, it can be confusing to know where you can access support. Although it is a relief to receive a grant of status, it is often a very overwhelming experience. Almost overnight, you need to learn what to do about how to get housing, social care, benefits, work, or bringing family to join you in the UK.

Take a look at our ‘What happens after you get refugee status?’ page to learn more about your rights, and access to support. 

Evictions

There has been a significant increase in the number of evictions from Home Office asylum accommodation for those who have refugee status since August 2023. 

This is difficult in itself, but what has made it harder is the very short notice people receive. In reality people were getting as little as a week or even 4 days’ notice from the Home Office to find somewhere new to live, and money to survive. This has since increased to 28 days. 

So, if you have been living in asylum accommodation, you will need to leave 28 days after receiving refugee status.

Some people are able to move in with friends, or to have help with renting privately. Others need more help, and can take a look at the resources we have listed in our ‘What happens after you get refugee status?’ page.

Next, read about the asylum screening (first) interview here.