Glasgow is experiencing a doubling of homeless refugees due to the Home Office’s efforts to clear the asylum backlog by year’s end, with London seeing mini refugee camps. Liverpool council has declared a homelessness emergency. Glasgow city council, the largest asylum dispersal area outside London, is considering declaring a housing emergency, as figures show the number of referrals to homelessness support services for those granted leave to remain has grown rapidly. The council is expecting a total of 1,400 referrals, with potentially hundreds more households in need of accommodation.
Cllr Allan Casey reveals a sharp rise in applications from those granted leave to remain outside Glasgow. Human rights campaigners and lawyers are raising the alarm over a sharp increase in rough sleeping. The British Red Cross estimates there could be 50,000 homeless refugees by the end of the year. Many of those sleeping rough are refugees from Sudan and Eritrea.
Once an asylum seeker wins leave to remain, they have 28 days to vacate their state-funded accommodation. It can take weeks for them to receive the documentation required to secure alternative, affordable accommodation and for their universal credit claims to be processed. The Guardian visited a new encampment in central London where people seeking refuge estimated that about 16 people were sleeping.
The leader of Liverpool city council has written to the levelling up secretary, Michael Gove, warning of a situation that they “regard as nothing short of an emergency” about refugee homelessness. They say they have been advised that 1,000 asylum seekers are likely to receive decisions on their claims “this side of Christmas”. Government sources said Liverpool had been given a homelessness prevention grant of £3.9m to help those at risk of homelessness to access the private rented sector.
Scotland’s housing minister, Paul McLennan, has said that the recent decision by the Home Office to fast-track the asylum backlog is poorly thought out and has left local authorities unable to plan, putting many people at risk of rough sleeping and destitution. The migration and refugees minister, Emma Roddick, has written to the UK government to ask it to bring forward funding for local authorities to manage this pressure
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