Five evidence-led stories on Glasgow asylum tensions, falling asylum figures, a fake council letter, Notting Hill Carnival at 60 and the online economy of division. The numbers can change while the political narrative stays frozen. That is the thread running through today’s briefing: real pressures deserve serious answers, but they are made harder to solve when viral claims, fake documents and profitable outrage replace evidence. Here are five stories.

Settlement rose, while asylum claims and hotel use fell. The Home Office figures show why mixing arrivals, settlement, citizenship and asylum misleads. The numbers being shared about future UK settlement are real. The problem begins when those numbers are presented as though they mean millions of new people are about to arrive in Britain. Settlement is not the same as arrival. It is a legal status generally obtained by people who are already living in the.

Claims that foreign nationals are taking social homes can sound simple. Official figures show a more complicated picture: eligibility is tightly controlled, most new lettings go to UK nationals, and asylum seekers and many visa holders are not eligible at all. “British homes for British people” style arguments work because they turn a complicated housing shortage into an apparently simple queue. If someone born elsewhere receives a social tenancy, the.

Small boats dominate the asylum debate, but the latest Home Office data shows 40% of asylum claimants arrived by small boat while 41% had previously held a visa or other leave. The asylum system is bigger than one route. Small boats dominate Britain’s asylum debate so completely that it is easy to assume they are the asylum system. They are not. The latest Home Office figures show a much more complicated mix of routes into the country before a person.

The number of asylum hotels is now less than half its 2023 peak, while the number of supported asylum seekers living in hotels is down 50% in a year. The system still has serious problems, but the political picture often sounds frozen in the past. The phrase “asylum hotels” became one of the most potent symbols in Britain’s immigration debate. At the peak in summer 2023, more than 400 hotels were being used to house asylum seekers, at enormous public cost.