Improvements needed to ensure successful completion of Afghan resettlement programme, says National Audit Office

• 37,950 people arrived in the UK under Afghan resettlement schemes between April 2021 and December 2025. 
• Government expects to spend a total of £5.7 billion on Afghan resettlement up to 2032-33, of which £2.6 billion has yet to be incurred. 
• The resettlement programme needs to urgently complete the key elements of effective programme management, including having better cross-government management information.

The government must overcome ongoing challenges including a lack of available housing and poor data to ensure its programme to resettle thousands of Afghan citizens in the UK is successfully completed, according to a new National Audit Office (NAO) report.¹

Since 2010, the government has offered resettlement in the UK to certain groups of Afghan citizens,² including people who worked with the UK government in some capacity during its military presence in Afghanistan. This work sometimes came with significant risk to those Afghan citizens and their families, who feared reprisals from the Taliban.

Although the schemes closed to new applicants in July 2025, thousands of Afghans are still being processed for resettlement.³ As at November 2025, 29,655 people were waiting to hear the results of their eligibility assessments.

Between April 2021 and December 2025, 37,950 people arrived in the UK under the schemes and, as at February 2025, the government estimated it would ultimately resettle around 9,000 more. Of those resettled, as at December 2025, 80% were living in settled accommodation.⁴

The government anticipates that its work to resettle and integrate people will continue until 2032-33, costing a total of £5.7 billion. It spent £3.1 billion on the schemes between April 2021 and December 2025, meaning a significant proportion of the costs have not yet been incurred.⁵

Several government departments worked at pace under complex and demanding circumstances when establishing the schemes,⁶ especially after the Taliban takeover resulted in a far greater number of people applying and becoming eligible for resettlement than had originally been envisaged.⁷

The need to respond quickly, coupled with departments being responsible for different groups of people and resettlement stages, meant that the schemes became complex and inefficient. This is likely to have led to higher costs and worse outcomes for resettled people.⁸

To address these challenges, in December 2024 the government merged the resettlement schemes into a combined Afghan Resettlement Programme (ARP), which aims to bring all eligible Afghan citizens to the UK by March 2029 and to have moved those citizens out of transitional accommodation by December 2029.

Although the creation of the ARP has led to some improvements,⁹ significant risks remain. These include poor data on the people to be resettled and their needs, and a lack of available housing, resulting in greater than anticipated levels of resettled people becoming homeless.  

To ensure the successful completion of the ARP, the NAO recommends that the government:

• urgently completes the outstanding elements of effective programme management
• undertakes scenario analysis to understand the potential barriers to completing the resettlement of all eligible people to the UK, and how these can be overcome
• monitors the effect of the changes under the ARP, particularly the introduction of a nine-month limit for transitional accommodation
• uses the results of pilot programmes involving local authorities and community organisations to identify innovative approaches and spread good practice
• identifies measures of successful integration for Afghan resettled people and uses these to assess outcomes

Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said:

“Government departments have worked together in challenging conditions to resettle thousands of Afghan citizens who were at risk of reprisals from the Taliban.

“Although progress has been made under the new Afghan Resettlement Programme, the government has more to do to successfully resettle the affected people in the UK.”

ENDS
Notes to editors

1. The report will be available on the NAO website via the following link from 00:01 Wednesday 18 March: https://www.nao.org.uk/reports/investigation-into-the-afghan-resettlement-schemes/
2. For a full list of the Afghan resettlement schemes run by the government from 2010 to 2025, including the qualifying criteria, see Figure 2 of the report.
3. On 1 July 2025, the government closed the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) and the Afghan Citizens' Resettlement Scheme (ACRS) to new applications and referrals. On 4 July, it also decided to close the Afghanistan Response Route (ARR), which was set up for some of those whose personal information was leaked in a February 2022 data breach. It announced this closure on 15 July following the lifting of the super-injunction that had previously prevented the disclosure of the data breach and the ARR. For more information on the ARR, see the NAO's September 2025 report: https://www.nao.org.uk/reports/the-afghanistan-response-route/
4. The government provides accommodation for Afghans arriving through the schemes. They are first housed in transitional accommodation, and then move into settled accommodation, which is sourced by local authorities, central government or resettled individuals themselves. People who have arrived under the schemes are being accommodated in 347 out of 361 local authority areas and in every region of the UK, with the highest concentration being in the south-east of England.
5. The most significant costs are expected to be the provision of transitional accommodation (£1.6 billion); integration costs (£1.3 billion); support before arriving in the UK (£1.2 billion); and settled accommodation (£0.8 billion).
6. Responsibilities for different elements of the resettlement schemes are spread across several different departments and have changed over time. The main departments are the Ministry of Defence (MoD), the Home Office, the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), and the Foreign & Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO). Other bodies involved include local authorities, international organisations and community sponsor groups.
7. In early 2021, the government expected it would need to resettle around 4,000 people, but expected numbers increased rapidly after the Taliban takeover in the summer of 2021 and the discovery of the data breach in August 2023.
8. Stakeholders told the NAO that this initial response was understandable but that the “chaotic” arrangements went on for much longer than was necessary. Government officials said this was in part because the super-injunction restricted communication about the schemes.
9. Significant changes introduced under the ARP included establishing a single process for individuals once they arrive in the UK, rather than separate routes for ARAP and ACRS; introducing a limit of nine months in transitional accommodation; and improving the funding provided to local authorities to improve integration outcomes.