Pressure mounts as two leading groups join criticism of asylum-seeker service
Asylum experts piled pressure on the beleaguered National Asylum Support Service this week, demanding radical changes to the way the government agency works.

An apparent communication breakdown prompted Immigration and Advisory Service chief executive Keith Best to criticise NASS in a report requested by the Home Office. It will be presented to minister Beverley Hughes at the next Home Affairs Committee hearing.

Any action taken in response will affect housing professionals who work with NASS on a daily basis, implementing government policy on asylum-seeker dispersal.

Top of Best's list of complaints was poor communication from NASS. He said: "There is increasing evidence that NASS is sending out letters to people whose appeals against asylum decisions are still pending, informing them that their support and accommodation has been stopped and that they must leave the country immediately."

Best said such situations left him no option but to challenge decisions in court. He urged NASS to open regional offices in order to deal with asylum applications more effectively.

He said the organisation needed to be more open and more easy to contact, and that better community consultation was needed to avoid another debacle like Sittingbourne.

Robina Qureshi, director of Scottish ethnic minority inclusion charity Positive Action in Housing, expressed similar concerns. "[NASS] is uncommunicative," she said. "We have 200 clients on our database and when we contact NASS to highlight a particular problem, we often don't get a response for ages.

"In some cases people have been attacked before NASS has got back to us."

Best and Qureshi's comments gained weight from home secretary David Blunkett's stinging criticism of the Immigration and Nationality Department on Monday. Blunkett called for a "step change" in the way the department deals with communities and sensitive issues.

Beverley Hughes has herself criticised NASS's approach to the planned dispersal of asylum-seekers to hotels.

It has been heavily criticised for failing to carry out adequate consultation over plans to turn a hotel in Sittingbourne, Kent, into asylum seeker accommodation. Now, the government is to review the way NASS procures properties for the housing of asylum-seekers.

NASS executives declined to comment.

Source

Housing Today