Almost 350 unaccompanied child asylum seekers have gone missing from Home Office and council accommodation in the last six years, The i Paper can reveal.

More than 1,600 reports of children aged 10 to 17 going missing from asylum hotels, foster homes and supported housing have been logged since 2020, according to data obtained through Freedom of Information requests.

While the majority of those cases returned, 347 missing children have never been found.

Campaigners described the figures as a “profound safeguarding failure”, warning that unaccompanied asylum-seeking children are already at “heightened risk of trafficking and exploitation, and going missing can expose them to further serious harm”.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has taken a hardline approach to asylum policy in an effort to tackle the small boats crisis, including ending permanent refugee status and increasing deportations. Official data out last week showed that the number of asylum claims, small boat arrivals and asylum seekers staying in hotels have all fallen year on year.

Chris Philp, the shadow Home Secretary, said The i Paper‘s findings were “extremely alarming” and suggested children were “being passed from the smuggling gangs into a system that is not keeping track of them”.

A spokesperson for the Government said it “works closely authorities and the police” to locate missing asylum-seeking children, adding that the majority of them are eventually located.

The data relates to children going missing from asylum accommodation run by the Home Office and 15 local authorities in England and Wales.

At least 756 of the 1,600 cases of reported missing children will now be adults over the age of 18.

Children ‘allowed to come and go’ from accommodation sites

Among local authorities, the highest number of cases was recorded by Kent County Council, which is required to accommodate children who arrive in the UK on small boats after crossing the Channel or in lorries via the port of Dover.

The council recorded 224 incidents of missing children between 2020 and 2025, of which 146 were resolved. That means the remaining 78 children were not found by the local authority.

A spokesperson for Kent County Council said that any child or young person missing from care is a “serious concern and we make every possible effort to protect them”.

The spokesperson added that Kent’s geographical location has meant the number of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children referred to its children’s services has nearly quadrupled in the past decade, placing the council under “immense pressure”.

Helen Whately, the Conservative MP for Faversham and Mid Kent, said it is “no surprise” that children were missing from her constituency.

“They are allowed to come and go from their accommodation as they please,” said Whately, who serves as the shadow Work and Pensions Secretary. “That’s a worry for local residents too.”

The council’s spokesperson said it is not legally permitted to treat unaccompanied asylum-seeking children “differently from other children in our care”, meaning they are “able to independently leave reception centres for short periods of time, with the agreement of staff about where they will be and when they will return”.

Suffolk County Council said 159 individual children had gone missing. Of those, 155 were found, with the remaining four still missing.

The third-highest number of cases was recorded at Essex County Council.

There were 132 missing incidents recorded at the local authority. All were resolved, meaning none of the children remain unaccounted for.

A spokesperson for Essex council highlighted that it takes its “responsibilities towards all children in our care extremely seriously, especially when they are genuinely under the age of 18.

“This includes unaccompanied asylum-seeking children who can be particularly vulnerable,” they said.

Once a child is reported as missing, the spokesperson said the council works closely with police, the Home Office and other partners to “find them as quickly as possible and ensure any safeguarding risks are fully assessed”.

Dozens missing from Home Office sites

The Home Office said no hotels or accommodation centres were used to house unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in 2024 and 2025. That followed a High Court judgment in 2023 which deemed the department’s routine use of hotels to house child asylum seekers unlawful.

But the data obtained by The i Paper shows that 472 incidents of missing lone children were recorded at hotels and accommodation centres run by the Home Office between 2021 and 2023.

While 432 of the cases were resolved, a total of 40 children have still not be found by the department.

The figure has previously been disclosed by Helen Waite, director of children’s social
care at the Department for Education. In June, she told Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights that of the 40 children that had been reported as missing from the Home Office’s accommodation, two remained under 18, with the rest being over age.

Overall, the largest proportion of cases reported by the Home Office and local authorities related to children who were Afghan, Albanian and Iranian.

Syrian, Iraqi, Vietnamese, Sudanese, Libyan, Kurdish, Eritrean and Ethiopian children were also reported as missing, among other nationalities.

‘One child going missing is one too many’

Gulwali Passarlay, a former refugee from Afghanistan who came to Britain on his own in 2004 aged just 12, said: “One child going missing is one too many, but the fact that hundreds of cases remain recorded as unresolved should be a serious safeguarding concern.”

Reflecting on his own experience as an asylum-seeking child, which is detailed in his autobiography, The Lightless Sky: An Afghan Refugee Boy’s Journey of Escape to a New Life in Britain, Passarlay warned that there could be “many reasons why a young person disappears”.

“Some children may still be under pressure from smugglers, traffickers or people to whom they or their families owe money,” he said. “Others may face pressure from family members or be drawn into irregular work or exploitation.

“There are also children dealing with trauma, anxiety, isolation and a deep distrust of authorities after everything they have experienced on their journeys.”

Passarlay also raised concerns about “elements of institutional discrimination within the way these children are treated”.

He said: “We have seen children whose ages are disputed and who say they are not believed about their experiences. They are already navigating an asylum system characterised by disbelief, deterrence and hostility. Whatever someone’s views on immigration policy, these are children and safeguarding them should never become an immigration debate.”

Patricia Durr, chief executive of the children’s rights organisation Every Child Protected Against Trafficking UK, said it was “positive” that the majority of children recorded as missing were subsequently found, but said that hundreds of unresolved incidents should be “a matter of urgent concern” and local authorities should be “transparent about how many individual children remain missing”.

Kamena Dorling, director of policy at the Helen Bamber Foundation, which provides specialised support for survivors of trafficking, said: “The fact that thousands of highly vulnerable children continue to go missing from asylum accommodation, despite years of warnings, represents a profound safeguarding failure.”