Officials in the UK have lost track of almost 7,000 resettled Afghans in Britain, the National Audit Office (NAO) has said.
In a report published earlier this week, the watchdog said that the whereabouts of 6,929 resettled Afghan nationals were unknown.
These people, who had settled in the UK prior to December 31, 2025, could not be accounted for, including “people who arranged their own accommodation immediately on arrival or who left hotels without providing a forwarding address”, the NAO said.
This means that of the almost 38,000 Afghans that have been resettled in the UK since 2021, 18 per cent are unaccounted for.
The report also said that the Afghan Resettlement Programme (ARP) had already cost taxpayers £3.1billion, with a further £5.7billion projected to be spent.
Costs towards the scheme had increased by 15 per cent, the report states, despite a reduction in Afghan nationals arriving in the UK.
A further 48,000 Afghan former police and military personnel are expected to move to the UK over the next seven years.
The ARP was set up in 2021 after the allied military retreat from Afghanistan, when the Taliban conducted an insurgency in the country, taking over control of the central Asian country.
A further 48,000 Afghan former police and military personnel are expected to move to the UK over the next seven years
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Allowing Afghans who had served beside the British military during the 20-year war seek refuge in the UK, the scheme has come under criticism from the watchdog.
The NAO described the process as “complex and inefficient”, with “chaotic arrangements” going on “for much longer than was necessary”.
Those that have been offered resettlement in Britain include the UK-funded Triples, Commando Force 333 and Afghan Task Force 444, who fought against the Taliban and other hostile non-state actors in the country, the Telegraph reports.
Some Afghans sought to escape using alternative schemes set up after the Taliban seized power following the withdrawal of Western forces.
Evacuees disembark from a Royal Air Force Boeing C-17 transport aircraft after arriving in the UAE from Afghanistan in 2021
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Their names were later included in a spreadsheet that was mistakenly exposed in February 2022.
An unnamed non-commissioned officer inadvertently sent an Excel file to Afghan contacts, not realising it contained the personal details of tens of thousands of individuals who had assisted British forces and were attempting to flee.
In the aftermath, ministers from both Conservative and Labour governments secured High Court super-injunctions to keep the incident out of the public domain.
Officials feared the Taliban could use the leaked information to track down and target those who had supported British operations.
Since then, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has come under fierce scrutiny over the gagging order, especially as it helped itself to billions of public money, outside the usual democratic checks and balances.
An MoD spokesman criticised the NAO’s report, drawing attention to the fact that once an Afghan had been resettled in the UK, the Government had no need to keep track of them.
Councils can apply for up to £26,000 of Government grants for each Afghan they house, the NAO report detailed.
For a UK resident, public spending averages at almost half of this figure, at £13,500 a year.
A Government spokesman said the report highlights both the scale and complexity of Afghan resettlement, while acknowledging the progress made so far, with around 38,000 Afghans now settled in the UK.
They added that the Government remains committed to completing the resettlement programme by the end of the current parliament.
The ARP has consolidated previous schemes into a single route aimed at improving outcomes for eligible applicants while ensuring better value for money, they said.
The spokesman also pointed to the introduction of new performance targets designed to speed up case processing and improve transparency for applicants and their supporters, alongside a new online eligibility self-check tool for the ARP.