Clearsprings Ready Homes founder Graham King, dubbed the ‘Asylum King’ for his lucrative Government contracts, is now worth over £1 billion – and is among the top 200 wealthiest people in Britain
A man whose company holds a lucrative contract housing asylum seekers has become a billionaire.
Graham King, dubbed the “Asylum King”, has seen his personal fortune grow by 35% over the past year. The personal wealth of the Clearsprings Ready Homes founder now stands at £1.015 billion, up from £750 million in 2024, putting him among the top 200 richest people in the country. The 58-year-old had made his debut on the Sunday Times Rich List only last year. Clearspring’s contract with the Government provides food, accommodation and transport for asylum seekers, and runs until September 2029. Their website states that the firm has been a “provider of accommodation services to the Home Office since 2000”, and holds contracts covering London, the South of England and Wales.
Mr King’s rising fortune over the past year came as the number of people claiming asylum in the UK reached a record 108,138.
After years of rocketing numbers under the Tories, the Labour Government has pledged to clear the asylum backlog by increasing resources dedicated to processing cases.
The Prime Minister has also set up a new taskforce dedicated to “smashing” the human trafficking gangs involved in smuggling people across the English Channel.
Ministers are meanwhile preparing to publish their Immigration White Paper on Monday, which will also include changes to skilled visa thresholds and tighter restrictions on recruitment for jobs on skills shortages.
It forms part of the Government’s wider strategy for bringing down net migration, which reached 728,000 in 2024 – but ministers will not copy the Tory strategy of setting overall target, which Ms Cooper labelled as a “failed approach”.The Home Secretary told Sky News on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips that ministers are going to “introduce new restrictions on lower-skilled workers” because “what we should be doing is concentrating on the higher-skilled migration and we should be concentrating on training in the UK”.“We will be closing the care worker visa for overseas recruitment,” she added.Under current rules, to qualify for a care worker visa a person must have a certificate of sponsorship from their employer with information about the role they have been offered in the UK.The Home Secretary told the BBC the rules around the system will change to “prevent” it being used “to recruit from abroad”.
But she said the Government will allow care providers “to continue to extend visas and also to recruit from more than 10,000 people who came on a care worker visa” when the sponsorship visa was cancelled under the Tories.
Mrs Cooper added: “Effectively they came to jobs that weren’t actually here or that were not of a proper standard.
“Care companies should be recruiting from that pool of people, rather than recruiting from abroad, we are closing recruitment from abroad,” Ms Cooper said.
