Asylum Accommodation and Support Provision in Scotland
Proposal Summary
We believe that the UK asylum and accommodation system remains broken as evidenced by both parliamentary inquiries and independent research and highlighted by the harrowing and avoidable Park Inn Incident.
Rather than observe the increasingly desperate and extreme measures that ignore international obligations and impose proposals upon local communities without regard for public opinion, we propose a system built on a sustainable and fair funding framework, innovation and deliberative democracy that involves wider devolved and local government and citizens, ensuring public oversight. A partnership, from and led in Scotland, with devolved and local government institutions working with citizens (asylum and local communities) ensuring public consent and accountability. We believe these are key elements of providing a welcoming and safe haven for all those seeking refuge and asylum in Scotland.
Our proposal will:
Deliver a locally managed asylum accommodation and support model by Scottish Local Authorities in Scotland, with the involvement of the Scottish government, and centrally funded by the UK Government; a system that places people into communities, in residential accommodation and not in institutional settings cut off from mainstream life.
Ensure public safeguarding, service and oversight - instead of contracting private companies, Home Office will provide full-cost funding directly to Scottish Local Authorities, who can then work with charities to support integration from day 1 and promote dignity and inclusion.
Build on the experience of the Syrian Vulnerable Resettlement Scheme Scottish Local Authorities will provide accommodation and support to asylum seekers in line with Scottish housing and homelessness support provision standards.
Embrace the spirit of the public support for Ukrainian and Afghan refugees that demonstrated empathy to help refugees seeking protection and those in the process to be able to fully participate and contribute to society and their local communities.
Empower the voluntary sector and community-based groups to support the integration of asylum seekers and ensure their access to community support with the Scottish Government’s New Scots integration fund, administrated by the Scottish Refugee Council.
This is in line with the “New Scots” Refugee Integration Strategy's five principles developed by the Scottish Government and COSLA in partnership with civic society and communities:
Integration from day one - support from arrival, not once leave is granted
A rights-based approach – empowering people with rights and knowledge of how to exercise them
Refugee involvement – refugees and asylum seekers themselves using their experiences to shape strategy and policy
Inclusive communities – ensuring existing communities are supported and enabled to participate in refugee integration
Partnership and collaboration – across government, agencies, and community groups.
Background information
The Case for Change
Asylum Accommodation and Support Contract (AASC) is a public service, currently contracted to private companies by the Home Office, valued at approximately £4 billion over 10 years.
This privatised for-profit model of provision of asylum accommodation and support has been practiced in Glasgow (Scotland’s only dispersal city since 2000) as in other areas across the UK. There is substantial evidence from previous independent reports and studies, that it is entirely dysfunctional, unsafe for service users, and economically and socially burdensome for cities, public services and the charity sector who are often left to pick up the pieces.
(See Public Accounts Committee Inquiry November 2020 - Asylum accommodation and support transformation programme - here,
And National Audit Office report July 2020 - Asylum accommodation and support - here).
The UK asylum and accommodation system has been systemically weakened over a decade by successive Home Secretaries. This has resulted in needless but real and persistent harm to people who desperately need the safety and privacy of a home, after what they have been through. Too often, in the privatised system of outsourcing this public service of housing, those values and needs have been lost or relegated. That damaging erosion and harms are consistently evidenced in UK parliamentary inquiries, independent inspectorate reports, independent research, media exposes and most recently in the Home Office evaluations, into how this system was done to people in Glasgow in 2020, particularly in the harrowing and avoidable Park Inn serious incident.
Home Office and their private contractors continually fall short of their duty of care and responsibility to provide safeguarding and support to vulnerable asylum seekers. Attempts to recommend and develop better practices have not been successful. Historically, there have been a plethora of recommendations made in inquiry/inspection reports, the vast majority of which were not accepted by the Home Office, with none reflected in the AASC contracts signed in 2019. The subjects of the recommendations were wide-ranging and include:
accommodation standards at Chapter 3 HAC 2018; Chapter 7 ICIBI 2018; and Chapters 5 and 6 HAC 2017;
pressures on dispersal system at to Paras.89-92 HAC 2018;
responsibility/cost-shunting from Home Office to local areas at Paras.79-80, 89 HAC 2018 and Para.118 HAC 2017;
failing performance management system at Chapters 8 and 9 ICIBI 2018 and Paras.83-91 HAC 2017;
need for direct funding to local dispersal areas at Chapter 4 especially paras.74 and 90 HAC 2018;
imperative for joint working and plans between Home Office and local authorities on dispersal policy at Paras.44 and 48 Home Affairs Committee (2017) and Paras.18, 34-35, 37 and 91 HAC 2018;
case for an open and effective performance management system with a formal local authority inspection role at Chapter 9 and, especially, Conclusions 3.10-3.22 and Recommendations 2-4 ICIBI 2018
The Home Office’s failures to adopt these recommendations demonstrate that reform or improvement of the existing system, without fundamental change, is not viable.
Furthermore, the system is being run with eye-wateringly wasteful costs, such that £3.5 million is being allocated by the Home Office and Treasury every day to private contractors and hoteliers, with nothing to local authorities, health services and communities, amounting to a gross mal-distribution of public monies away from the people and into the private interests running this system.
The human consequences of this system have been severe in Glasgow and across the UK. People are suffering mental health deterioration at scale, some are even losing their lives, while communities and councils feel ignored. In June 2020 the tragedy of Park Inn took place as a direct result of this complete failure of safeguarding as admitted by the Home Office in their internal evaluation report.
An analysis of the evidence gathered by legal representatives in Glasgow further exposes the level of physical and psychological harm that has been inflicted on service users by this system and the constellation of failures at every level of provision and planning.
Under the current model, Local Authorities and the Scottish Government do not have the power and the resources (this is delegated to private companies) to provide accommodation, support, safeguarding, and care to vulnerable asylum seekers in line with Scottish housing and public service provision standards, nor do they have the powers to properly scrutinise the private provision of this service.
It does not and need not be like this. We must demand a collaboration to chart a clear, credible alternative with peoples’ and local communities’ interests at the centre.
The New Mandatory Dispersal Scheme (Full Dispersal Model)
From 13 April 2022, the asylum dispersal scheme is no longer a voluntary scheme for Local Authorities; all local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales will be considered a dispersal area and will need to take part in asylum dispersal.
It is unclear on what legal basis the Home Office are asserting this new arrangement. However, it is clear that as a result of this new arrangement vulnerable asylum seekers will be sent to Scottish Local Authorities; private companies will continue to procure poor accommodation, likely in the form of warehousing asylum seekers in institutional accommodations. The evidence cited above suggests that they will continue to fail to provide safeguarding and care to vulnerable service users. Public services and the charity sector will be left to pick up the pieces while the financial resources will be directed to the private contractors.
The direction of travel of the UK Home Office is clearly stated in the New Immigration Plan and the Nationality and Borders Bill: rendering asylum seekers inadmissible to the asylum system and then forcibly removing them to Rwanda, the introduction of asylum camps across the UK (here and here), holding people in legal limbo for years with limited rights, and persistent denial of what people wish most: to work, to be independent and to contribute to their community and not be held back by the system.
The impact of these policy changes on Scottish towns and cities will be increasingly severe. The current model of asylum support and accommodation provision in practice will be socially destabilising and divisive, causing significant pressure on public services and the charity sector as well as communities. It does not and need not be like this.
An Alternative Scottish Asylum Accommodation and
Support system is possible
Our proposal to Scottish local authorities, the Scottish Government, and communities
Refugees and asylum seekers in Scotland, civil society organisations, academics, and field experts ask Scottish Local Authorities, COSLA, and the Scottish Government to work towards an alternative system. We are committed to working in collaboration to co-create this new system for Scotland and make it a success. Under this model:
Asylum accommodation and support in Scotland will be centrally funded by the UK Government, and locally managed by Scottish councils involving the Scottish government, experts-by-experience, and charities.
Instead of contracting private companies, Home Office will provide full-cost funding directly to Scottish local authorities.
Building on the experience of the Syrian Vulnerable Resettlement Scheme, Scottish councils working with the Scottish government will arrange national and local integration plans centred on accommodation and support to asylum seekers in line with Scottish housing and homelessness support provision standards.
Capitalising upon and embracing the spirit of the Ukrainian response by the public, this model will facilitate refugees seeking protection and those in the process to fully participate and contribute to society and their local communities.
Scottish Government’s New Scots integration fund, administrated by Scottish Refugee Council, will empower the voluntary sector and community-based groups to support the integration of asylum seekers from day 1 and ensure their access to community support.
Benefits
Local authorities will maintain control over provision in their areas, developing models that can adapt to local realities.
The Scottish Government will use and strengthen existing New Scots structures, systems, and stakeholders to support the development of a Scottish model that can be a beacon for good practice.
Investment in communities will benefit all residents of Scotland and ensure the long-term integration of New Scots arriving under the dispersal programme.
Vulnerable people will be better supported, and experience improved mental and physical health, and be able to re-build productive lives in Scotland.
Next steps – Home Office consultation process
Home Office will launch an 8-week informal consultation with local authorities on 9 May 2022 to work through the detailed regional plans.
We invite Scottish Local Authorities, COSLA, the Scottish Government and wider civic society and communities to engage in this consultation constructively, working towards the above proposal.
We would be happy to discuss this further.
Contact
Refugees for Justice is a refugee-led group of people with lived experience who have been subject to the current asylum support and accommodation provision system in Scotland.
