The council asylum team has spent four weeks preparing for the new tenants – making sure housing is suitable, cleaning up old council homes, fitting new locks and moving in furniture. But as the coach pulls up, they see it is almost empty. They have been misinformed – just three people step off the bus.
Confusion at NASS means that four weeks' work has gone to waste, says Brian O'Hara, asylum support project manager at Glasgow council. O'Hara hasn't yet worked out the financial implications but he does know that the cost to staff morale is high. "If we're expecting 40 people and we only get a few turning up, then obviously we've wasted time doing up more properties than we need to."
The incident is symptomatic of a worsening communication breakdown between NASS and council housing departments. The situation is so bad that it has led to calls for radical changes to the way the government agency works – and the rift couldn't have happened at a worse time for the government.
Asylum is a political hot potato. In 2001, 71,365 people claimed asylum, which, although a drop of 11% from 2000's figure, is still enough to keep the issue in the news – because only an estimated 42% of those people were given permission to stay.
Just this week, prime minister Tony Blair announced plans to crack down on illegal immigrants by posting more immigration officers at ports in France while Opposition leader Iain Duncan Smith fanned the flames by claiming that "the vast majority" of asylum applications were unjustified.
All this only makes council officers' work harder, jeopardising their attempts to create community cohesion. But the incident in Glasgow, which has accepted more than 5000 asylum-seekers so far, reveals another side to the story – how housing staff are affected by confusion within the system itself.
Councils have a legal responsibility to house asylum seekers until their applications are either accepted or rejected under the 1999 Immigration and Asylum Act. For the last three years, NASS has been responsible for dispersing asylum seekers around the country – 60% through contracts with private landlords and 40% through local authorities (see "How asylum seekers make their claims", below).
The job of a council asylum officer is to find asylum seekers a suitable place to live, help them apply for benefits and advise them on medical care. On top of that, asylum seekers may be traumatised or have mental health problems and often do not speak English – and as O'Hara points out, asylum teams find it tough dealing with trauma victims. "Sometimes staff find it hard to cope with hearing such stories day in, day out; sometimes they're depressed because they want to do more for these people."
The difficulty of dealing with the inflexible regime at NASS only adds to the stress. In an incident last summer, again in Glasgow, the council locked horns with NASS when the latter insisted that the city take new asylum seekers at a time when it was struggling to cope with flooding. Ian Elrick, director of housing services, recalls: "NASS told us that if we didn't take people, it could enforce financial penalties. It was not sympathetic."
Glasgow's housing services stood firm over the course of several weeks and successfully persuaded NASS not to impose a fine. Once the floods subsided, the council resumed taking asylum seekers, but the incident left officers with a sense they were being browbeaten by an unfeeling bureaucracy.
Many councils report frustration at the lack of adequate consultation by NASS. It was just this that caused a furore earlier this month when NASS failed properly to consult residents and the local authority over a plan to use a three-star hotel in Sittingbourne, Kent, as an induction centre for asylum seekers. Home secretary David Blunkett accused the immigration and nationality directorate of incompetence, and immigration minister Beverley Hughes announced a review into NASS's operations.
Manchester Labour councillor Marilyn Taylor has personal experience of the headaches caused by NASS's lack of communication. The council has a contract with NASS to provide 1701 homes for asylum seekers, but when NASS contracts properties in the private sector, it is under no obligation to tell the council – even if the placement has an indirect impact on the local authority.
"NASS has procured private housing in the area and we're suddenly finding asylum seekers in private properties whom we didn't know were there," explains Taylor. "The impact is that their children will have to be found places in schools, they will have to register with local GPs and some may need extra support from social services because of what they've been through."
As reported in Housing Today last week (HT 23 January, page 9), Immigration Advisory Service chief executive Keith Best has written a report for the Home Office complaining about NASS's inaccessibility and lack of openness. Best says asylum seekers whose claims are pending have been wrongly sent letters telling them they must leave the country. "NASS are sending out the wrong letters, or people aren't getting their letters on time – and you can't get in touch with NASS to discuss things. It's very distressing." In one case, says Best, NASS ordered benefits to be withdrawn from a woman whose claim was still pending. The Immigration Advisory Service tried to contact NASS eight times over the course of two months, to no avail.
So what can be done?
Council sources say the central issue is NASS's inability to communicate effectively. Many believe the only way forward is for the organisation to introduce regional offices in order to deal with claims more effectively and liaise better with local authorities. "Regionalising NASS services would lead to greater support and understanding of what the issues are for us," says Manchester council's Marilyn Taylor.
Another suggestion is for councils to have a greater say in dispersal. The Local Government Association is calling for local authorities to be the main coordinators of dispersal. A spokeswoman says: "We asked for a more locally coordinated approach to dispersal, because authorities need to be able to assess how much money will be needed to meet the needs, in terms of service provision, of people they are housing. This approach needs to include the private sector."
The Home Office is considering the regional NASS offices idea and hopes to have an idea of how this would work by the end of this financial year. As for the communication issues, it is relying on the appointment, just over a year ago, of Freda Chaloner, a former assistant director at the Inland Revenue, as director of NASS. A spokeswoman says: "We recognise that there have been problems with regards to contacting NASS and we hope that the appointment will go some way to stabilising the organisation."
But until policymakers agree on a concrete strategy and timescale for solving the problems facing council officers like Brian O'Hara in Glasgow and Marilyn Taylor in Manchester, the chaos can only continue.
How ASYLUM seekers make their claims
Asylum seekers register their claims either at their port of entry or at the Nationality and Immigration Department’s headquarters in Croydon. Officers record their details and take fingerprints and a photograph. While claimants await a decision – which can take anything from a few months to a year – they cannot work. For housing, they can stay with friends or family or be housed by the Home Office’s National Asylum Support Service, which sends asylum seekers directly to private sector landlords or to councils. City councils liaise with NASS on how many spaces they have and NASS staff allocate them tenants. Before NASS was created in April 2000, councils themselves were obliged to pick up the bill for destitute asylum seekers. Figures up to the end of November 2001 show that 42,020 people have been dispersed by NASS to cities including Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle and Leeds. The support that NASS gives varies: someone aged 25 or over gets £37.77 a week, someone aged 18-24 gets £29.89, a couple gets £59.26, a lone parent gets £37.77 plus £33.50 for each child under 16, and 16-17 year olds get £32.50. If a claim for asylum is rejected, the asylum seeker will get support for up to 28 days, in which time they must leave the country. Claimants might be refused asylum but given exceptional leave to remain for a limited time under the European Convention on Human Rights. If refused both, they can appeal to the independent Immigration Appellate Authority. Once a claim is accepted, the asylum seeker becomes a refugee and the council is handed a new responsibility: finding him or her a permanent home.More bad news
As if communication and consultation difficulties weren’t enough, a new problem is rearing its head in the shape of the National Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. Under this law, which came into force on 8 January, asylum seekers who fail to make an claim “as soon as reasonably practical” will be denied benefits. The problem is that some genuine asylum seekers may delay claiming because of a wide range of reasons: bad advice, language problems or ignorance of the system. Without benefits, they could easily end up homeless. Margaret Lally, deputy chief executive of the Refugee Council, warns: “We are seeing clients who have been in the country for as little as 24 hours who are being turned down for support because it took them a day to claim for asylum.” In another case earlier this month, an asylum seeker from Cameroon was told by NASS that he did not qualify for support because he did not claim asylum in time. He slept in a car park for two nights before he was found. A spokesman for charity Shelter said: “Sleeping outside in January for two days is bound to take a physical toll on him and, at the end of the day, his application is going through the system.” The law has already been challenged in the courts. Two weeks ago, High Court judge Mr Justice Maurice Kay ordered urgent hearings into two human rights test cases challenging the policy. He said: “It is apparent from this group of cases and conversations with other judges that this might be the beginning of a flood.”Source
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