North West

St Helens

Official local-authority snapshot as at 2025-12-31. This page keeps live route data and local hotel evidence on one place-level surface so pressure can be read in context. Supported asylum here means people on support at that quarter end, not the number of different people whose claims were processed locally, and not a one-word substitute for the backlog.

England Population 188,861 Supported asylum 668

How to read the asylum numbers here

A flat or slowly moving local line does not prove the same people stayed on support, and it does not prove claims were not being processed. It only shows the quarter-end stock that remained on support, which overlaps with but is not identical to the awaiting-decision backlog.

Core logic

Quarter-end stock, not throughput

Supported asylum counts show how many people were receiving support at the end of the period. They are not new claims, arrivals, or the number of distinct people seen across the period.

Support is not the same thing as the backlog

People awaiting an initial decision and people on asylum support overlap, but they are not identical groups. Some supported people are further into appeals or on other support routes, while some people awaiting an initial decision are not in the published support count.

Processing and exits move the stock

The stock changes when people enter support and when they leave it through case progression, including grants, refusals, withdrawals, departures, or moves out of the published support categories.

Flat local lines can still hide churn

A place hovering around the same level can mean low movement, or heavy turnover with inflows offset by exits. The published local tables do not show how many different people passed through support in that area.

Quarter-end supported asylum stock in St Helens

Quarter-end stock series to Dec 2025. A rise or fall is a net change in the number of people on support at period end, not the number of new claims or distinct people moving through the caseload. Support stock also overlaps with, but is not identical to, the awaiting-decision backlog.

668
750 500 250 0 Mar 2014 Dec 2025 Peak Jun 2023
Trend readout Dec 2025

Recent path and evidence quality

Latest net stock move

+24 since Sept 2025

+3.7% net change in quarter-end stock by the latest step.

Net change across visible series

+ 666 across the visible series

+33300% change in quarter-end stock from the first visible point to Dec 2025.

Series quality

48 official quarter points

The visible trend line is built entirely from official quarter-end supported asylum values in the local area series.

Interactive place drill-down

Switch metric and comparison frame to read St Helens as a pressure leader, rate outlier, contingency site, or three-pathway case without leaving the page.

Shareable place lens
St Helens ranks 11 of 35 in North West; Liverpool currently leads this regional measure.
Supported asylum North West

Quarter-end asylum-support stock for this local authority, not the number of distinct people who passed through support.

St Helens ranks 11 of 35 in North West; Liverpool currently leads this regional measure.

Current value 668 people
Regional rank #11
National percentile 86th

Pathway breakdown

The local picture only becomes legible when supported asylum, contingency use, Ukraine arrivals, and Afghan programme population are kept distinct.

Supported asylum
668
Homes for Ukraine
145
Afghan programme
47
Resettlement cumulative
127

What stands out here

Pressure profile

St Helens is carrying a real asylum-support load

668 people are on asylum support here at quarter end, with a rate of 35.37 per 10,000 residents. 86 are in contingency accommodation.

Three-pathway load

860 people across the main local pathways

This combines supported asylum, Homes for Ukraine arrivals, and Afghan programme population, representing 0.46% of the local population.

Hotel visibility

Public hotel evidence is still thin here

No named current hotel site is attached to this area in the starter ledger yet.

National benchmarks

These strips show where St Helens sits in the national distribution for the most important place-level pressure measures.

Supported asylum count

National distribution across all local-authority rows.

668
low median top 10% high
Supported asylum rate

Rate per 10,000 residents.

35.37
low median top 10% high
Contingency accommodation

Hotel and other contingency placements.

86
low median top 10% high

Regional pressure context

North West is highlighted so this place can be read inside the wider regional supported asylum map.

supported asylum total
North West 20,864 London 16,378 West Mids 13,499 Yorkshire 9,748 East Mids 7,829 South East 7,472 North East 7,350 East 6,715 Scotland 6,688 South West 4,499 Wales 3,353 N. Ireland 2,608
Highlighted tiles mark the focus regions. Darker tiles indicate higher values in the latest local-authority snapshot.

Editorial readout

These cards translate the data into the most defensible local claims the site can make right now.

2025-12-31 evidence frame
Volume

St Helens is outside the top ten by volume, but still carries a material local load

St Helens ranks 50 nationally and 11 in North West for supported asylum count, placing it around the 86th percentile of local authorities by volume.

Intensity

Intensity is stronger than the raw count alone suggests

The supported asylum rate here is 35.37 per 10,000 residents, around the 92th percentile nationally. This matters because smaller places can carry a sharper load than bigger city totals imply.

Accommodation model

The local picture leans more toward dispersal than contingency pressure

86 people are in contingency accommodation here, around 12.9% of the supported asylum population and roughly the 73th percentile by contingency count.

Visibility

The hotel layer is still mostly invisible in public records here

No named current site or unnamed acknowledged count is attached to this area yet, which is itself a reminder that absence of public evidence is not evidence of absence.

Local route metrics

The area profile should show route composition, not force users to infer it from a single asylum count.

Asylum support

Accommodation split

Dispersal accommodation 579
Initial accommodation 0
Subsistence only 3
Contingency accommodation 86
Ukraine and Afghan pathways

Other current routes in this place

Homes for Ukraine arrivals 145
Afghan programme population 47
Afghan local authority housing 47
Afghan private rented housing 0
Historical routes

Resettlement history

Resettlement cumulative total 127
UK resettlement and family reunion cumulative 127
Community sponsorship cumulative 0
Latest resettlement quarter 2020 Q1 (7)

Regional peer frame

The regional ranking matters because high-pressure areas compete for attention with their nearest peers, not just with the national top ten.

Liverpool
2,189 supported asylum
Manchester
1,846 supported asylum
Wigan
1,189 supported asylum
Bolton
1,067 supported asylum
Stockport
834 supported asylum
St Helens
Current page | 668 supported asylum
Local reading North West

How this place reads in context

St Helens sits 50 nationally by supported asylum count and 11 within North West. The raw volume is 668, but the rate of 35.37 per 10,000 residents gives a cleaner sense of local intensity than the headline count on its own.

Homes for Ukraine is the largest non-asylum pathway in this area at 145. That matters because the local story is not just about one route family; it is about how asylum support, humanitarian schemes, and historic resettlement stack together in one place.

North West as a whole currently carries 20,864 people on supported asylum, with a weighted regional rate of 26.97 per 10,000 residents. This page puts St Helens inside that wider regional pressure field instead of treating it as an isolated case.

Hotel evidence for this place

Place pages should merge live route data with the named and unnamed hotel evidence already on the public record.

Evidence gap

No public hotel evidence logged yet

That does not mean the area has no hotel use. It means the ledger has no publishable public evidence row attached yet.