THE number of people offered safe and legal routes to the UK dropped by more than a fifth in a year, new figures show.
The Government said this was mainly due to a fall in the number of visa and extensions granted on the schemes set up in 2022 in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Ukraine Family Scheme, under which people were able to apply to live, work and study in the UK and access public funds for up to three years, closed under the Conservative government in February last year.
The Ukraine Extension Scheme (UES), which had allowed people already in the UK to remain, closed to most people last May and fully earlier this month.
A Palestinian family was granted the right to live and stay in the UK under the scheme, in a move which saw criticism from the Prime Minister.
It was replaced by the Ukraine Permission Extension (UPE) scheme, allowing Ukrainians to extend their stay for a further 18 months.
There were 22,873 people offered visas or extensions under the Ukraine schemes last year, down 53% on 2023 (49,027 people).
Last year’s figure was less than a 10th of the 232,135 people offered visas or extensions on the Ukraine schemes in their first year of existence in 2022.
A total of 79,312 people were offered safe and legal routes to come to or stay in the UK in 2024, down 21% from 100,124 in 2023.
Last year, a total of 7815 refugees were resettled under government schemes in the UK, the Home Office said.
The majority of these, 91% (7,081), arrived through Afghan resettlement schemes.
Separate figures also show Afghans were the most common nationality of people arriving in Channel crossings last year. Some 5919 Afghans arrived via the dangerous crossing in 2024, an increase of 7% on the previous year.
The number of Afghans coming on this route peaked in 2022 – following the Taliban takeover of 2021 – at 9088.
