UK Resettlement Scheme to Reopen: What the First Phase Means

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood will announce the immediate reopening of the UK Resettlement Scheme (UKRS).

The Home Office said the scheme will reopen immediately, restoring a safe and legal route that stopped taking new applicants in December 2024, according to BBC.

Ministers said hundreds of people are expected to arrive in the first phase under the UKRS and three new sponsorship routes. The exact number is not yet fixed. The UKRS works through referrals from the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, which identifies refugees abroad for resettlement in Britain.

Ministers said around a quarter of arrivals are expected to be Afghan women and girls and Palestinians. The Jerusalem Post reported the restarted programme will prioritise those groups.

The Home Office said three new routes will allow communities, universities and companies to host refugees from next year. Think of the cap as an annual budget for places. Ministers said a cap, or yearly limit, will be set each year for safe and legal routes, but the level has not been given. It said arrivals under those routes should rise to the low thousands as levels of illegal migration fall.

The Home Office confirmed people arriving under the safe and legal routes will be put on a five-year path to permanent settlement. It said the timetable applies to new arrivals under these routes.

The Guardian reported Mahmood had planned to set out the reopening in her speech to the Labour conference on Monday. The scheme had been in effect suspended for two years. More than 39,000 people arrived in the UK under the Afghan Resettlement Programme. The government confirmed in July 2025 that Afghan schemes were either closed to new applicants or discontinued. The UKRS itself closed to new referrals in December 2024, leaving a gap in UNHCR-referred resettlement alongside the bespoke Afghan and Ukraine routes. Councils and sponsors will be asked to provide places.

Ministers had announced separate asylum changes earlier. Reuters reported they included quadrupling to 20 years the wait for permanent settlement for refugees. Mahmood also said Britain would scrap the legal duty to support refugees and halve initial leave to remain to 2-1/2 years, according to Reuters. Those proposals came before the current detail on the five-year path.

The broader context here is a capped, sponsor-led model. It links legal places directly to progress on small boats and other irregular arrivals. It creates a yearly decision point on numbers. It also moves much of the delivery work from Whitehall to councils, campuses and employers.

Looking at delivery, three questions stand out. First, referral and screening throughput. Second, housing and integration funding for receiving areas. Third, how the annual cap is set, and whether Parliament will vote on it or simply be notified. None of those mechanics has been published. Officials have yet to explain how the 20-year track and the five-year track sit together. The 25% figure is the clearest early sign of caseload planning, and it will decide whether hundreds rising to low thousands is a forecast or an aspiration.