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Glasgow councillor warns refugees may have to be housed in leisure centres
Refugees may have to be housed in leisure centres, a councillor has warned, as the Scottish city prepares to find accommodation for up to 2,500 people.
Addressing the Scottish National Party (SNP) conference in Aberdeen on 16 October, Allan Casey said the city would struggle to find permanent housing for newly approved asylum seekers.
Mr Casey, who represents the Dennistoun ward on Glasgow City Council, said: “Up to 2,500 people are at immediate risk of homelessness in Glasgow in a matter of weeks, due to deliberate decisions of the UK government – 700 of those potentially destitute, with no recourse to public funds.
“This has the real potential to be a humanitarian catastrophe in towns and cities up and down the country.”
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He added: “We’re in real danger of having to commandeer sports and leisure centres and set up emergency-type accommodation, something that is only really considered during a natural disaster like a flood or fire.”
Mr Casey estimated the cost to Glasgow of finding permanent housing for the refugees was £50m, but said the Home Office had “told us we’ll receive not a penny to cope with this situation”.
He said the UK government must “pause these damaging plans at once. They must work with us on implementing a humane approach through the asylum decision-making process, which also must come with the adequate resources to enable us to properly manage this dire situation.”
The conference approved an emergency motion, which stated that SNP members were “deeply concerned” about the Home Office’s plans, which were “leading in effect to forced homelessness for over 1,000 asylum seekers in Glasgow and destitution for those denied recourse to public funds following refusal of their applications”.
A fellow Glasgow councillor, Susan Aitken, told the conference asylum seekers would be “thrown out of their asylum accommodation and Glasgow City Council will have to find homes for thousands of people, potentially in the space of weeks”. If their claims were refused, they could be forced into destitution, she added.
“The UK government could simply allow the people to remain in their asylum accommodation until the council is able to source them a permanent home,” Ms Aitken said.
“But asylum accommodation was privatised by the Tories. The provider wants to keep making its profits, and the Tories want to clear more asylum seekers out of the South of England, where their voters are, and dump them not just in Glasgow, but across the UK.”
There are around 4,600 asylum seekers in Glasgow who are waiting to find out if they have secured refugee status, which allows them to stay permanently.
When an asylum seeker receives a positive decision, they are given 28 days to leave the accommodation provided by Mears Group, a private firm contracted by the Home Office.
At that point, any household which has received leave to remain in the UK can seek assistance from councils under homelessness legislation.
