On the ground in the refugee and asylum capital of Britain

Today in Focus

The Guardian

Daily News, News

4.6 • 5.7K Ratings

🗓️ 5 November 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

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Summary

Helen Pidd heads to Crawley, West Sussex, the place in the UK with the highest number of asylum seekers and supported refugees relative to its population. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/infocus

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The Guardian.
0:06.9	Today, we head to the asylum and refugee capital of the UK.
0:17.0	I've called a lot of politicians in my 20 years as a journalist, and it's fair to say,
0:21.7	they're not always happy to hear from me.
0:23.9	Still, I was pretty surprised at the response I got when I rang the leader of Crawley Borough
0:30.2	Council in the south of England a few months ago.
0:32.4	Hello.
0:33.4	Oh, hi, is that Michael?
0:35.4	Speaking.
0:36.4	Yeah, hi, it's Helen Pidd here.
0:37.9	I'm a journalist from The Guardian.
0:39.9	This is Michael Jones, the Labour leader of the council.
0:42.5	I wanted to talk to you about.
0:48.2	I'd rather not comment on it, to be honest.
0:51.2	You don't know what it is, though.
0:52.7	It's about the latest immigration figures that have come out today from central government,
0:57.7	the quarterly figures.
0:58.5	I don't want to make any comment.
1:00.6	Okay.
1:01.3	Why not?
1:02.1	How come?
1:05.4	Crawley is a town of about 120,000 people near Gatwick Airport.
	...

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