British taxpayers are forking out £80m every year for failed asylum seekers to appeal against their rejected claims, shock new data reveals. Each case is costing an average of £4,000 meaning a total of £79.5 million was spent on the administrative costs of hearing asylum appeals in the 2024-25 financial year, according to official figures released in response to a Freedom of Information (FoI) request.

The cost has increased by more than a quarter compared with the previous year due to the number of asylum seekers appealing against rejected claims soaring. The number of rejected people waiting to appeal against the decision almost doubled from 34,234 in 2024 to 69,670 last year. However, only a fraction of these case were heard at an immigration tribunal. In the 2024-25 financial year just 20,126 asylum appeals were heard and decided by immigration and asylum tribunals at a cost of £3,786 each. Almost half (46%) proved successful. The costs related to the internal administrative bill of hearing appeals, which included the salaries of judges and court staff and running costs of the tribunals.

Since 2019-20, £395 million has been spent running immigration and asylum tribunal hearings, according to the data. The data was obtained by the Conservative Party through an FoI request. Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said the figures exposed the cost of the “endless legal merry-go-round” of the asylum system.

The mammoth court bill is in addition to the £24,000 average annual cost of housing each asylum seeker and the Home Office’s costs of fighting the appeals.

The FoI request also revealed that the cost of providing taxpayer-funded legal aid to asylum seekers appealing against rejected claims soared by 56% in the 2024-25 financial year to reach £6.2 million. Nearly £30 million has been paid out in legal aid for asylum appeals since 2019-20. The official data reveals that asylum appeals take an average of 60 weeks to be heard, during which time most asylum seekers live in taxpayer-funded accommodation.

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Mr Philp said the figures revealed an asylum system that has “lost all restraint” and despite their own failed record during 14 years of government, insisted the Conservative Party would fix the system through its plan to increase the number of deportations to 150,000 a year – more than tripling the current number of removals.

The party’s plan relies on its controversial pledge to leave the European Convention on Human Rights.

The former policing minister told The Times: “Taxpayers are burning nearly £80 million a year for an endless legal merry-go-round designed to delay decisions, block removals, and keep illegal immigrants who have no right to be here.

“No one is fooled by tough talk from Labour, as they will never do the hard work needed to tackle the lawfare that blocks removals.”

Labour says it has reduced the cost of the asylum system from a peak of £5.4 billion a year under the previous Conservative government in 2023-24, when there were 56,000 migrants in hotels at a cost of nearly £9 million per day.

Sir Keir Starmer has pledged to end the use of hotels to house migrants and Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, has begun moving migrants on to new military bases, including the former training camp at Crowborough in East Sussex.

The lengthy waiting times are frustrating the government’s efforts to move migrants out of hotels. As of September there were 36,273 asylum seekers in hotels, while a further 66,200 were in dispersal accommodation such as bedsits and multi-occupancy houses.

It cost an average of £170 per night to house an asylum seeker in a hotel in 2024-25 but only £27 per night in dispersal accommodation.