Birmingham City Council is planning to buy up to 50 homes to provide temporary accommodation for displaced Afghans and Ukrainians.
www.localgov.co.uk
Is this the solution the government has come up with?
The problem is that there is really no viable and universally acceptable way to accommodate the 150,000 (and increasing) people waiting for their asylum claims to be considered. The use of hotels has been condemned as has housing provided by local authorities. People don't want 'holding centres' in existing sites (e.g. ex military bases, holiday camps etc). The idea that the UK could build new 'holding centres' far away from communities is ludicrous if only for cost and time reasons e.g. a planned cat C prison housing 1,440 men was given outline planning approval in 2019 and is expected to be completed in 2025 at a cost of £400 million. The government's overall plan to provide 20,000 new prison places is forecast to cost £3.75 billion. As I say there are currently around 150,000 people with asylum claims pending
We've been over the government's strategy for dealing with asylum before but it involves dramatically shrinking the number of people that are allowed to apply for asylum, reducing the rights to challenge refusals for those that are and using Rwanda to scare potential new asylum seekers off. The fundamental flaw in the government's plan is that they will still need to be able to deport unsuccessful asylum seekers. They won't all be able to go to Rwanda. I think the plan is only for a very small number per year. So the government will have to reach agreements with other countries to take rejected asylum seekers and unwanted illegal immigrants. I still don't see any sign that this is happening to any great degree. The suggestion from the government is that they will use granting visas to citizens of those countries as a leverage.
