Refugee family reunion peaked in 2024 and is now falling
12,888 refugee family reunion grants in the year to June 2026, down from 20,643 in the year to June 2025.
This route quadrupled and is now retreating. The series matters more than any pair of years in it:
| Period | Grants |
|---|---|
| 2019 | 7,456 |
| 2020 | 4,797 |
| 2021 | 5,645 |
| 2022 | 4,113 |
| 2023 | 9,320 |
| 2024 | 19,258 (the peak) |
| 2025 | 18,577 |
| Year ending June 2025 | 20,643 |
| Year ending June 2026 | 12,888 |
Pick 2022 as the baseline and the current figure is a tripling. Pick 2024 and it is a third off. Pick 2019, the last clean pre-COVID year, and it is 73% higher. All three are true and none of them is the story on its own.
What drives it. Family reunion is a route attached to protection already granted in the UK, not a resettlement scheme. It follows grant decisions with a lag, which is why it climbed through 2023 and 2024 as the initial decision backlog was cleared, and why it is falling now that the grant volume has come down.
An earlier edition of this page said 18,869 grants in 2025 and described the route as rising. The Home Office’s own revision puts 2025 at 18,577, and the direction has since changed.
Share this finding. Right-click to save the image.