Home Office errors blamed as main cause of homelessness among asylum seekers

A report published on 11 April found that more than half (52%) of applications to the charity Refugee Survival Trust were from people who needed financial help because their asylum applications had been delayed by errors and procedural hold-ups.

Of those, 95% were due to errors at the Home Office’s National Asylum Support Service, which houses asylum seekers using private and social landlords while they are waiting to hear whether they can stay in the country.

The delays contributed to the fact that a third of people who made funding applications to the trust were homeless or of no fixed abode. The report cites the case of a Sudanese man who was stabbed in Edinburgh after delays in processing his application left him on the streets.

It calls on NASS to tackle the growing problem of homelessness and “provide an effective safety net to support people when delays or unforeseen circumstances occur”.

Funded by Oxfam, the study analysed 1000 applications to the trust between 2000 and 2004.

The trust’s findings were supported by the charity Positive Action in Housing, which said the number of homeless asylum seekers it was housing had shot up from very few to more than 100 in the past year. Its director Robina Qureshi said: “We have dealt with 138 cases of destitute asylum seekers in the last year. These are people who have been evicted from council accommodation and effectively put out onto the streets and it’s a scandal.”

The report was also welcomed by the Refugee Council. “The system, in general, including NASS, struggles to keep up with the complexities of people’s lives,” said a spokeswoman. “We need to look at the way the system works because it is very rigid.”

The report called on NASS to liaise more closely with support organisations to provide housing for asylum seekers and pressed for extra resources to be spent on processing applications more quickly.

The Home Office this week said it had recently changed its procedures to speed up applications from asylum seekers who make their claim late.

A spokesman defended NASS’ record for housing destitute asylum seekers. “One hundred per cent of claims assessed as destitute are resolved within 24 hours and accommodation is provided by NASS. Those who fail the asylum process will normally be required to leave NASS accommodation except for those with children under 18,” he said.

“The government wants failed asylum seekers to leave and programmes are in place to assist them with that.”