12,000 AFGHAN EVACUEES STILL IN UK HOTELS AWAITING PERMANENT HOME

Wed 29 December 2021:

According to a report in the Guardian, around 12,000 Afghan refugees will usher in the new year in hotels as the UK government struggles to persuade enough councils to look for permanent homes.

“Over 4,000 individuals have either moved into a settled home or are in the process of being moved or matched to a suitable home,” according to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), of the 16,500 people who have been airlifted from Afghanistan to the UK since August.

The remaining refugees are still waiting for word on when they will be able to start rebuilding their lives.

According to the most recent figures, by the end of September, councils in Yorkshire and the Humber had welcomed 213 of the 770 Afghans resettled across the UK this year. Ninety-two of those were in Bradford, compared with just 24 across all the London councils. After Bradford, Edinburgh was the city to have resettled the most Afghans this year: 67.

According to a spokesperson for the Home Office, over 300 local governments across the country are working together to provide permanent housing.

According to the report, because the government has decided not to force local authorities to rehouse the refugees, they may not be distributed evenly across the UK.

Officials from the London City Council described the situation in hotels as “chaos,” and expressed particular concern about the hotels’ long-term ability to accommodate the large number of children currently residing there.

Many have established community ties in London, their children have begun school, and it will become increasingly difficult to uproot them and relocate them to a different part of the country where there is a greater supply of affordable housing. While the government has made housing grants available to newcomers, none of the Afghans who arrived in the UK after August 31 are eligible.

Because they do not have permanent addresses and cannot guarantee to an employer that they will not be shipped across the country with little notice, the vast majority of Afghan refugees stuck in hotels are unable to work.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

FILE PHOTO: Members of London‘s Afghan community protested against UK Government inaction, in Afghanistan at Trafalgar Square, London,

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