Police have mounted a national operation to “get ahead” of potential violence targeting asylum accommodation following a series of riots and attacks, The i Paper can reveal.

Operation Ordo sees the Home Office notify police chiefs of areas where hotels, large sites or houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) are being set up, so local forces can prepare their response.

It is part of wider efforts to anticipate and prevent disorder, including enhanced social media monitoring, amid continued efforts by far-right activists to incite protests and draw up databases of asylum accommodation locations.

Chief Constable Mark Hobrough, chair of the National Operations Coordination Committee, told The i Paper that under Operation Ordo the Home Office notifies the responsible police lead “about the intentions on large builds or utilising certain areas”, and that the police “go back to the Home Office with policing consequences that can be expected”.

“Last year was a very significant year for an uplift in that type of protest and public disorder [targeting asylum accommodation] and that, according to our figures, hasn’t let up,” Hobrough added.

“The community tensions group and the hate crime portfolio leads have been reporting escalating matters in both areas.”

Most riots have been linked to “trigger incidents”, Hobrough said, such as the Southport attack or crimes – or rumoured crimes – committed by asylum seekers.

But he said that unrest was becoming “increasingly difficult” to predict because some disorder, like the attacks on asylum HMOs in Thetford earlier this month, as it not at times preceded by trigger incidents and arose instead from a “growing narrative” that all asylum seekers are a threat.

In April 2024, a neo-Nazi terror attack took place at a recently emptied asylum hotel near Worcester, where an Eritrean man who had returned to collect a bicycle was stabbed but survived.

Asylum seekers have been the target of several other terror attacks and foiled plots, including the firebombing of a small boat reception centre in Dover in 2022 and the attempted beheading of an Iranian man in Bristol last August.

Protests targeting asylum hotels began in 2020, when their use increased during the Covid pandemic, and riots have broken out in locations across the UK over the past three years. Several have seen asylum accommodation vandalised and set on fire.

The trend has been driving up demand on the police by increasing the overall number of protests each year, and causing a rocketing number of “mutual aid mobilisations” where riot officers are sent from one part of the country to the other and cannot perform their normal duties.

“We’ve tried to heighten the ability to monitor national intelligence, get better investigations with triple I capability [internet intelligence investigation], and also improve our coordination capability,” Hobrough said. “We’ve invested in individuals who’ve got bespoke roles in dealing with intel and data.”

The monitoring covers a wide range of activity, including the attempted compilation and sharing of asylum accommodation address lists using AI.

“It is challenging because you can have places that have an underlying current where [disorder] can grow pretty quickly off an innocuous comment or an event or an incident, especially when details get misconstrued or repeated in an inaccurate way,” Hobrough said.

“I’d never be as bold as to say we could intervene on everything, and that we would be aware of everything … but what I would say is we’re constantly improving our capability of being able to monitor, prepare and intervene.”

The police chief said that forces were also trying to “negotiate with certain groups”, adding: “We still stand by that great British principle of allowing peaceful protest and freedom of expression wherever we can. But when things look like they are escalating out of hand, we are improving in the way that we’re able to get ahead of the curve in relation to anticipating it.”

Separately from Operation Ordo, which began in September 2025, another national operation codenamed Wintercrest has been running this year to coordinate the response to all kinds of disorder.

The National Police Chiefs’ Council has also put out guidance to forces on how to respond to immigration-related disorder, and coordinate with local councils and other authorities.

The efforts come as the Government moves increasing numbers of asylum seekers out of hotels into HMOs, which have less security, and tries to open large sites such as former military bases which have sparked strong local opposition.

The Home Office said it was working to house asylum seekers fairly across the country and reduce the overall number of people requiring government-funded accommodation.

A spokesperson said: “Any threats of violence or intimidation directed at individuals, or their homes, are completely unacceptable.

“We are working closely with the police to provide appropriate security advice to our providers, and established protocols remain in place to ensure any safety concerns are dealt with swiftly and effectively.”