Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme in Scotland: statistics - February 2025

Background

This release is the final publication of Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme statistics by the Scottish Government. This decision has been made with agreement from the Office of the Chief Statistician following an assessment of the continued value in publication. Since the number of people in Welcome Accommodation has dropped significantly from its peak, and the situation has shifted from crisis management to a more stable state, along with lower user interest in the recent reports, it was decided that the statistics are no longer providing enough value to continue. However, we will keep engaging with users and monitoring public interest, especially given the rapidly changing global situation.

This publication summarises the latest Scotland-level data on people displaced by the war in Ukraine arriving through the UK ‘Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme’, which includes those sponsored by the Scottish Government (also known as the Scottish super sponsor) and individual sponsors. This report uses operational data from welcome accommodation facilities and local authorities across Scotland compiled by the welcome accommodation team within the Scottish Government. This data includes the number of displaced people from Ukraine that are in welcome accommodation and the number of rooms booked, occupied, and unoccupied in welcome accommodation.

The data will complement the information on the numbers of applications, visas and arrivals of displaced people from Ukraine to the UK where the sponsor location is Scotland and the other three UK nations, already regularly published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), continuing the statistics published by the former Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC).

This report accompanies the Official Statistics in Development tables on the Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme in Scotland.

This statistical release has been designated as Official Statistics in Development which has not been assessed by the UK Statistics Authority.  Official Statistics in Development are official statistics that are newly developed or innovative, and are undergoing evaluation. 

This report provides data on welcome accommodation. It is not a full account of all displaced people from Ukraine. Displaced people with visas are free to enter the country and live and work where they want. Not everyone entering the UK through the Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme (including those sponsored by the Scottish Government) will need accommodation provided to them. They may make their own arrangements, including renting their own accommodation or staying with friends and family. Some arrivals may have also self-matched with a volunteer host, assisted by a charity or support network. Those arrivals may never be in contact with a welcome hub or local authority seeking accommodation. We do not collect data on this subset of displaced people from Ukraine.

Previous publications in this series have included a time-series of estimated guest numbers. These numbers were calculated on the assumption of 1.9 guests per room on average. We are now able to source actual guest counts from figures provided by the hotels, available since start of July 2024.  Due to the availability of this data and concerns that the average number of guests per room has decreased over time thus reducing the accuracy of our estimates, we have replaced the estimated guest numbers time series with a new time series beginning in July 2024. Guest numbers in this new time series are not comparable to the estimates provided in previous publications due to the changes in methodology so any comparisons over time should be made using rooms numbers only. To demonstrate the magnitude of differences between the new and old approach in the August 2024 edition of this publication provided a comparison of the actual number of guests versus the number of guests which would have been estimated for the same date using the previous methodology.