More than 30 leading refugee and asylum seeker charities have called on the government to give local authorities more power over accommodation for those seeking sanctuary in the UK.
Around £4bn of government contracts to provide housing to asylum seekers from September 2019 was put out for tender in November. The closing date for bids is 17 December.
In October, the Refugee Council said the current system – in which G4S and Serco manage the majority of asylum seeker housing – “routinely dumped” traumatised people into “squalid, unsafe, slum housing conditions”.
In an open letter to the home secretary, 33 organisations ask that local authorities be given the role of providing “independent oversight” of housing in their areas.
Responsibility for housing people seeking asylum in the UK was taken away from local authorities in 2012 when contracts to provide the service were given to G4S, Serco and Clearsprings.
“At £4bn of public money, it is one of the UK government’s largest contracts,” the letter reads. “As agencies working to support refugee integration across the UK we are concerned that these public funds may once again go exclusively to private sector companies, with little or none of that money directed to support local government and the local communities where refugees are housed.
“A safe, secure home is a necessity for people seeking refugee protection in the UK. As most people arrive here exhausted and destitute it is right, and indeed a legal obligation, that the government provides housing to people in need as a public service.”
The letter’s signatories – who include the CEOs of the British Refugee Council, the Scottish Refugee Council and Refugee Action – ask the home secretary to give councils a role overseeing how asylum housing is “planned, procured, implemented and formally scrutinised in their areas”.
The letter also calls for local authorities and communities to be “fairly and fully financially resourced” to ensure they can manage the costs of accommodating asylum seekers.
In January this year, the home affairs select committee produced a report which branded conditions in asylum housing “disgraceful” after hearing evidence of widespread infestations of mice, rats and bedbugs.
A Home Office response to the select committee report, issued in November, claimed it had implemented improvements that met many of the MPs’ criticisms. In their letter, the charities said they were alarmed that the government had “not engaged substantively with this report and the critical evidence made to it”.
Speaking on Thursday at a Westminster hall debate on the Home Office response to the report, MP Yvette Cooper urged the government to recognise that some accommodation for asylum seekers was not fit for habitation.
“If we don’t recognise the problems that occurred as part of the last contract, how can we be sure that these issues will be recognised in the new contracts and the new system,” she said.
Immigration minister Brandon Lewis, representing the government in the debate, said they were committed to ensuring destitute asylum seekers were accommodated in safe, secure and suitable accommodation.
He insisted the vast majority of the housing provided was a good standard. “It is important to be aware that the contracts of provision of housing for asylum seekers do demand high standards,” said Lewis. “In many areas they are higher than that which we see in the social housing sector.”
Asylum seekers do not have permission to work while awaiting a decision on their claims. Under the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 they are able to apply for accommodation and financial help from the Home Office if they have no other means of supporting themselves.
