Data obtained by the Guardian shows 51 people died in Home Office provided accommodation in 2024. A record number of asylum seekers died last year while in the care of the Home Office, according to data obtained by the Guardian, and officials admit they do not know when some of them died. Fifty-one people died in Home Office-provided accommodation in 2024, an increase of 11 on the previous year, and a more than twelvefold rise since 2019 when four people died.
In the figures released after freedom of information requests, the Home Office initially claimed that only 30 people had died during the year, but had to apologise after it emerged there were 21 additional deaths. The Home Office’s freedom of information team confirmed that the data stating there were 30 deaths in 2024 was incorrect. “It has been brought to our attention that the information provided … contained incomplete data. I would like to apologise for this error,” an official from the team wrote.
Deborah Coles, the director of the charity Inquest, which advocates for families who have lost loved ones in the care of the state, said: “There is a shocking lack of scrutiny and accountability from the Home Office and a complete disregard for the lives of this vulnerable group. Whether the incorrect data issued by the Home Office freedom of information team is deliberate concealment or incompetence, it shows a shocking disregard for the extremely vulnerable people who died.”.
While some deaths were a result of illness or old age, others are thought to have happened as a result of suicide. Charities fear that the treatment of asylum seekers in the UK has adversely affected the health of an already vulnerable group of people. One of those who died was an Iranian man who is believed to have been dead for a month in March last year before he was found. His decomposing body only came to light when a bad smell started to come from his room in shared housing in Colchester, Essex, and his housemates raised the alarm.
The Home Office does not publish data about deaths of migrants in their care in the way that Ministry of Justice does about prisoner deaths. But human rights and refugee organisations have called on them to do so. The cross-party home affairs select committee is conducting an investigation into government accommodation for asylum seekers and the charity Asylum Matters has called on the inquiry to respond to their calls for greater transparency about these deaths.
Of the initial 30 deaths in the Home Office figures, almost a third – nine – are attributed to suspected suicide with a similar number whose deaths were attributed to an unknown cause, which could include suicide. Only eight were definitively linked to illness or natural causes. Twelve died in their teens, 20s or 30s and for 11 the date of death was listed as unknown. The Home Office did not comment on whether there had been a delay in the bodies of this group being discovered while they were in the care of the Home Office, although sources did not dispute that the Iranian man’s body was not discovered for a month.
Based on previously disclosed FoI data deaths of asylum seekers have increased more than twelvefold in the past five years with just four in 2019. Asylum applications have more than doubled in that period. The names of some of the asylum seekers who died in 2023 and 2024 while in Home Office accommodation have been reported including Leonard Farruku who died on the Bibby Stockholm barge in December 2023 in a suspected suicide, Claudia Kambanza from Namibia who died in Hull in January 2024 after a stabbing, and Amir Safi, a young Afghan asylum seeker who said he was 16 but who was classified as an adult by the Home Office, died after a road traffic collision on the M1 in April 2023.
Maddie Harris, of Humans for Rights Network, which supports young asylum seekers, said: “The Home Office must urgently clarify precisely how many people have died whilst in the asylum system and under its care. This information should be proactively released as opposed to the current situation which is completely devoid of transparency.”. Home Office sources said these deaths were investigated as standard by statutory partners, including the police and coroner, to establish the facts and circumstances that took place and that officials expect service providers to conduct routine welfare checks and notify the relevant authorities of any issues.
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org.
