Migrants Push UK City to Breaking Point as ‘Magnet-Pulled’ Asylum Seekers ‘Exploiting’ Local Housing Policies

Migrants have pushed a British city to breaking point as soaring demand piles pressure on its housing system.

Glasgow has become a “magnet for asylum seekers”, prompting local government watchdogs to sound the alarm over the mounting financial pressure facing the city.

Under the Scottish National Party’s (SNP) homelessness rules, councils have a legal duty to provide accommodation to people assessed as homeless, including refugees granted permission to remain in Britain after claiming asylum.

Lord Offord, Leader of Reform UK Scotland, told Holyrood homeless asylum seekers had done “significant damage” to the country and councils should “focus on housing our own local Scots in need”.

And Reform UK Scotland’s Deputy Leader Thomas Kerr told GB News: “Glasgow, where I’m sitting at the current moment, is the asylum capital of Great Britain.”

Critics say the SNP’s 2022 decision under then-leader Nicola Sturgeon to scrap the “local connection” policy, which required homeless applicants to have roots in the authority they apply to, has fuelled the crisis.

Mr Kerr added: “You no longer have [the local connection policy], which means that loads of people who are granted leave to remain are now flocking to Scotland and been given priority over people who are here in this country.”

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Glasgow City Council, Scotland’s largest local authority, had to deal with more than 2,000 homeless applications from people from outside of Scotland last year, Lord Offord said.

The Reform MSP also claimed the City of Edinburgh Council has “frozen” council housing applications from homeless Scots to give “priority to asylum applicants”.

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