Shortage of housing hits asylum programme

A NEW programme to settle thousands of asylum-seekers around Britain is being undermined by the chronic shortage of housing available in many parts of the country.

Officials chosen to coordinate the programme warned yesterday that targets for rehousing asylum-seekers were unlikely to be met, and expressed fears of rising racial tension if people were placed in inappropriate locations.

The project aims to relieve pressure on local authorities in London and Kent, by dispersing around 6,500 asylum-seekers a month, including 1,300 families and 1,300 single adults. The 10 regions receiving the asylum- seekers are each expected to take about 260 heads of household a month.

But Mike Robinson, the regional co-ordinator for the South-west, said: "The feasibility of actually receiving thatnumber per month must be in doubt."

He added that demand for accommodation in the South-west was high compared to the number of empty houses.

Asylum-seekers had already filled most of the empty accommodation in the South central region, in places such as Portsmouth and Bournemouth, said the area's co-ordinator, Robert Watts: "They need to build around a million homes in the South. There is not a lot of spare stock we can use."

The Ministry of Defence may be approached as a last resort to supply accommodation, he added.

Tensions are already running high in coastal towns where asylum-seekers have been housed. The co-ordinator for the Eastern region, Robin Rennie, said that in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, local people had complained that their children were being denied school places offered to the children of asylum-seekers.

"Some areas are at saturation point and it would be counter-productive to put any more [asylum-seekers] in," Mr Rennie said.

Sandy Bruce-Lockhart, the chief executive of Kent County Council, which is housing around 6,000 asylum-seekers, said that, while some councils had been "extremely helpful", they had not always managed to identify the required 6,000 places a month.

The Local Government Association, which is organising the programme, described it as a "huge logistical feat". The dispersal of asylum-seekers was due to start yesterday as part of a voluntary interim arrangement that will stay in place until April, and foreshadow the new system for handling asylum-seekers laid out in the newly passed Asylum and Immigration Act.

Barbara Roche, the minister responsible for immigration, denied there was a danger that asylum-seekers would end up being housed on "sink estates", the name given to accommodation that is only spare because nobody else is prepared to live in it. "The accommodation has to be adequate and appropriate and has got to be provided in such a way that there are support services as well," she said.

There has been a more enthusiastic response to the scheme in the north of England, where there is less pressure on housing and where many authorities participated in the programme to help refugees from Kosovo earlier this year.

Among the first buildings to be used in the new scheme will be Clare House, a former social services building capable of housing up to 50 asylum- seekers in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, where there is a large Kashmiri community.

London's co-ordinator, Janet Haddington, estimated that there were 60,000 asylum-seekers now living in social services care in the capital.

She said there was no more suitable and available accommodation for asylum-seekers in London and Kent, but added that those with good reason to remain in the capital would be allowed to stay, such as torture victims who were in need of specialist medical attention.