The UK Is Taking Refugees Again – Here's the Plan
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood will announce the immediate reopening of the UK Resettlement Scheme.
The Home Office said the scheme will reopen now. It brings back a safe and legal route that stopped taking new applicants in December 2024, according to BBC.
Ministers said hundreds of people should arrive in the first stage under the scheme and three new sponsorship routes. The exact number is not yet fixed. Under the scheme, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, picks refugees living abroad and refers them to Britain.
Ministers said about one in four arrivals should be Afghan women and girls and Palestinians. The Jerusalem Post reported the restarted programme will put those groups first.
The Home Office said three new routes from next year will let community groups, universities and firms host refugees. Like a yearly guest list, a cap will set how many can come through safe routes each year. It said arrivals should grow to the low thousands as illegal migration falls. The cap level has not been given.
The Home Office confirmed new arrivals on these routes will be on a five-year path to permanent settlement.
The Guardian reported Mahmood had planned to give the news in her Labour conference speech on Monday. The scheme had been effectively paused for two years. More than 39,000 people arrived under the Afghan Resettlement Programme. The government confirmed in July 2025 that Afghan schemes were closed to new applicants or ended. The UKRS closed to new referrals in December 2024. That left a gap in UN-referred places alongside the separate Afghan and Ukraine routes. Councils and sponsors will be asked to provide places.
Ministers had set out separate asylum changes earlier. Reuters reported one plan was to increase the wait for permanent settlement for refugees to 20 years. Mahmood also said Britain would end the legal duty to support refugees and cut first permission to stay to 2-1/2 years, according to Reuters. Those plans came before the five-year plan for safe-route arrivals.
The broader context here is a system that ties legal places to progress on small boats and other irregular crossings. It means a yearly decision on numbers, with much of the work done by councils, campuses and employers rather than central government.
Looking at delivery, three practical questions stand out. They are how fast referrals and checks can happen, how housing and support money will work, and how the yearly cap is set and whether MPs vote on it. None of that detail has been published. Officials have yet to explain how the 20-year wait and the five-year path fit together. The one-in-four figure is the clearest early clue on planning.
