Thousands of asylum seekers are now being dispersed around the country by the Home Office. But setting up the new system hasn't been plain sailing. Kate Murray goes behind the scenes.
Imagine setting up a homeless persons unit from scratch. Suppose it's got to be the biggest in the UK. Oh, and your clients are at the centre of one of the biggest political debates of recent years. Could you get things up and running in just a few months - and guarantee there wouldn't be any problems?

That's the scale of the task which has confronted those at the National Asylum Support Service (NASS) since the organisation was set up by the Home Office last December. The service went live in April, taking on responsibility for all asylum seekers who applied at their port of entry.

In July, the roll-out to all in-country applicants began. By this month, NASS had received more than 8,000 cases. They are currently coming in at the rate of 640 a week.

It's not just the numbers which are challenging. Setting up local authority consortia has not exactly been trouble-free. One consortium, angry at private sector contracts being set up without its knowledge, said this month that the system was in "absolute chaos". Then there's been flak about the quality of some of the private sector accommodation where asylum seekers have been placed. And on top of all that, there's the ongoing pressure from authorities in London and the south-east over the existing asylum seekers they are already supporting.

If the strain is being felt, it doesn't show at NASS' offices in Croydon, where hundreds of caseworkers are busy assessing claims and sorting out accommodation. On whiteboards, staff mark up the times of coaches leaving Dover and London for all points north. On the phone, they talk to providers about whether an Iranian they are planning to send to a Farsi-speaking cluster area can be placed in the accommodation they have in mind.

And NASS' director Bob Eagle is upbeat, despite what he admits have been teething problems. "It has gone better than I hoped and a whole lot better than I feared," he says. "The pressure to get NASS working was intense. It is true that earlier this year we were saying we would take the whole thing on lock, stock and barrel, but it became clear earlier this year that if we wanted to have the best chance of success, it had to be phased."

Eagle says the organisation is in a difficult situation, likely to come under fire from some if it shows how helpful it is being, criticised by others if it comes across as too tough. "We are steering a middle course, we have given neither side enough ammunition," he says.

But Eagle admits NASS was initially "naive" about problems which would arise once it was up and running. There was an assumption, for example, that once an assessment had been made and accommodation allocated, that would be "problem solved". But some asylum seekers didn't want to get on the coaches they were supposed to and others came back with changed circumstances.

And, Eagle admits, when the service was launched there weren't as many people as he would have liked checking on the standards of accommodation used. Those problems are being addressed, with more staff transferred to the allocations section to deal with complex cases and more on the property inspection side.

It's not all down to problems on the NASS side either. There's a feeling in the organisation that local authorities were too slow to get involved. Eagle says that's due both to an initial wariness over the contracts on offer and political issues. "There's inevitably a political dimension," he says. "Are local councillors willing to be seen to be by their electorate welcoming asylum seekers?"

But councils like Glasgow, which led the first consortium to sign up, soon sussed the benefits of getting paid to make some of their empty properties available.

According to Mike Canham, seconded to NASS from Westminster council to negotiate contracts with local authorities, there are other benefits too. New communities are being created in inner cities, while the money they bring in can be channelled into regeneration initiatives.

"What Glasgow and other authorities are hoping is that by running a proper contract, they are hoping to make people feel settled, and that many of them will choose to settle in that area," Canham says.

And now that more local authorities - and housing associations - are coming on board, NASS hopes standards generally will rise. Bob Eagle explains: "In the early stages, we were pretty reliant on the private sector and you can't afford to be too choosy. Now we wouldn't hesitate to close a contract down. We are not so constrained that we can't afford to dispense with accommodation."

In fact, says John Hinchliffe, only a small minority of the accommodation it uses has caused concern. "There's a misconception that everything in the private sector is grasping and everything in the public sector is rosy," he says. "In factthe majority of accommodation in the private sector is as good if not better than the public sector."

It's a no-choice system. Accommodation is allocated in cluster areas, and although staff say they try to take note of asylum seekers' preferences, there's only so much they can do. One caseworker cites the example of an asylum seeker who wanted to go to Cardiff or Bristol. But with no accommodation there, the closest they could do was Wrexham.

Bob Eagle says the no-choice system is perfectly reasonable for those genuinely fleeing persecution, "whereas if you have come here to work then it will be less attractive".

Here too, the organisation is obviously trying to steer the middle course. So while there is an acknowledgement that there might be people with a genuine medical reason to stay in London, or real experience of racial harassment in the place where they were sent, there is also a determination to root out the "scams".

Eagle says NASS staff are encouraged to be non-judgmental. "We see both sides of the coin with staff," he says. "We see people who are sympathetic to and appreciate of people's difficulties, and we also see people who will have picked up what's clearly a con."

So what of the future?

Eagle is keen to see NASS take on responsibility for existing asylum seekrs currently supported by local authorities. There may be questionmarks over whether it is reasonable to disperse asylum seekers who have been living in London for some time. But Eagle says: "Our policy line at the moment is that it is reasonable. People move around so there is no reason why asylum seekers shouldn't move."

NASS will be talking to local authorities, and is likely, Eagle suggests, to set up pilot schemes. In the meantime, hopes are high at NASS that the organisation can continue to steer its middle course, away from the tumult of the last few months to calmer waters ahead.