UK: Welcoming Newcomers and Communities

New Oxford analysis highlights that the UK invested over £20bn over 10 years to support the welcoming of newcomers - the integration and community cohesion of those arriving to the UK.

Jacqueline Broadhead, Director of the Global Exchange on Migration and Diversity

This is a significant investment and one which has had real benefits for people arriving from Hong Kong, Syria, Ukraine and Afghanistan among others, but which has been fragmented across 26 separate funding streams and without a clear objective - instead being predominantly reactive and crisis driven.

The welcoming of newcomers, their integration and overall community cohesion - basically everything that happens after the moment of arrival and decision of immigration status - receives vastly less attention in terms of both media coverage and policy making than migration.

However, migration questions often quickly become questions of integration or welcoming. How do we live well together? How do we manage fair and equitable access to public services? How do we make sure that there is contact between different communities? And how does this impact our sense of identity and belonging?

These are serious questions, and ones which have serious consequences.

Unacceptable violence in the summer of 2024 lead to fear for newcomer communities and concerns amongst wider communities about the state of cohesion. However, thankfully, this type of unrest is not indicative of the whole picture, with nearly 70% of people in England consistently stating that they get on well with neighbours from different backgrounds. This means that there is clear optimism in the successes of our capacity to welcome as well as the pessimism arising from news reports.

However, whilst the UK undoubtedly ranks highly in some studies on overall attitudes to immigration and integration, there is not always clear evidence of intent or impetus from central government.

There is no strategy for integration at UK level and no significant policy papers since the UK Integrated Communities green paper in 2018 and Indicators of Integration in 2019.

That doesn't mean that the UK isn't spending money on this work though.

Indeed, the UK is an outlier in how much more costly it is to support asylum seekers and refugees here than in similar Western countries.

Our analysis highlights that this is not because the UK is inherently a more costly place to do this work, but that it does not target its resources well.

Spending is crisis driven and reactive, targeted to specific groups rather than population wide and, in some cases (such as asylum hotels), has been criticised for significant overspending which does not benefit either newcomers or communities.

So, what is the solution?

The good news is that the solutions proposed in the report are in many ways aligned with the mission-based approach of the government, calling for a clear goal which can work across government (where currently the responsibility is divided between the Home Office and the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government - MHCLG).

Welcoming starts in communities, and it is local authorities who can best play the leadership and convening roles in their places. They are well placed to understand where there might be tensions, including in relation to access to public services and working to build consent in communities for migration, including through forging connections between different groups.

There are also signs that the government is moving towards this model. Work is already underway to bring together the separate teams for Afghan, Ukrainian and Hong Konger support. MHCLG has committed to minimising the use of 'bid-in' pots, where council have to make time consuming competitive applications often for relatively small amounts of short-term funding.

Resources are tight and this approach does not call for additional funding for integration work, but instead asks the government to commit to a clear plan for welcoming and devolve a long-term funding settlement to local government to deliver it, drawing together the current disparate array of funding streams.

Crucially, this is not a policy area which can be run solely out of Whitehall.

Welcoming starts in communities, and it is local authorities who can best play the leadership and convening roles in their places. They are well placed to understand where there might be tensions, including in relation to access to public services and working to build consent in communities for migration, including through forging connections between different groups.

There are already many examples of good practice on welcoming, including the wave of compassion which saw so many people choose to welcome those from Ukraine and elsewhere. Equally, while there is no UK wide strategy, there are strategies and work in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland which the government could learn from.

There are also huge gains to be made from welcoming well.

Newcomers make a crucial contribution to the UK's economic growth, with the Office for Budget Responsibility estimating that net migration of 350,000 would reduce UK borrowing by £7.4billion by 2028-29 (after taking into account the types of costs estimated here).

Migration policy always involves trade-offs, but properly organised and defined welcoming work can help mitigate these trade-offs, ensuring that growth doesn't come at too high a cost in terms of access to GP appointments or school places, and helping communities to manage the speed of change.

The UK currently lacks a clear strategy on welcoming of newcomers. A proper welcoming policy would put more power in the hands of communities, to recognise that in order for people to live well together there needs to be sustained investment in local places, public services and shared community spaces.