Asylum accommodation and local connection: it’s complicated!

In response to recent queries about establishing a “local connection” for those leaving asylum accommodation, Housing Rights contributor Sue Lukes offers this guidance, with input from The Refugee Buddy Project

The asylum accommodation system is still in flux. The Home Office pilot of offering 56 days accommodation after a favourable decision on the asylum case is certainly creating some of the space needed for people to avoid becoming physically homeless (especially if they can get good advice and support from the overstretched organisations trying to offer it). But alongside this the Home Office is also under pressure to cut costs and source cheaper accommodation (like the Wethersfield former military base plus dispersed accommodation), standing down some more expensive options like hotels and seeking better value for money. One large sub-contract (with Stay Belvedere Hotels) has been terminated. There is a logic to it all, but the actual experience of asylum seekers and newly recognised refugees is often one of seemingly rushed and arbitrary decisions that take no account of their needs.

Local authorities have also often expressed concern. While asylum support accommodation is not their responsibility, the people living there are residents with needs to access services, and Home Office grants rarely cover them. And when people finally get their refugee status the housing authority then has a homeless application to deal with. The Home Office has told councils in areas where it develops “large scale” sites that it will not move people out before they get a decision, but does not seem to adhere to this completely. Of course, the effect may be that the refugee will get their decision very soon after they have moved into a completely unfamiliar area, after spending months or years in other accommodation.

But what happens when a refugee has their status confirmed? Again, it often feels chaotic. Some get given 56 days’ notice immediately, some do not and are left in limbo for weeks or longer. Sometimes they are told to move to other asylum accommodation after their decision but before they have been given notice, or even after they have been given notice. With the notice, the refugee can then go to the local housing authority and ask for help, as someone threatened with homelessness. Leaving to one side the other issues, one that often comes up once priority need has been determined, is local connection.

Generally, because the refugee has no choice about asylum accommodation, this does not create a residential local connection with the area(s) where it is provided. The refugee or members of their household may have local connections with an area: a job, a family member resident there for five years, or residence there by choice (e.g. with family or friends) for six months out of the last 12 or three years out of the last five. If the refugee has no local connection anywhere, then the authority where they apply as homeless will have the duty to secure housing.

But there is a specific local connection created by asylum accommodation: with the area where the refugee last lived in accommodation provided under s95 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. This is not all asylum accommodation! When people first claim asylum they are placed in “initial accommodation” under s98 of the Act, which does not create a local connection, and then moved on into “dispersed” accommodation under s95. However, over the last five years things have got quite muddied. The pandemic and the failure to make timely decisions on asylum claims created a massive backlog of asylum applicants, many of whom are still accommodated in “contingency accommodation”, mostly hotels and some larger sites. Contingency accommodation may be under either s98 or s95: s98 accommodation is meant to be only short term but people may find that they are simply “moved” to s95 but stay in the same hotel.

So a refugee who has got their asylum decision can go to the local council and ask for help, and will be defined as “threatened with homelessness” if they have received the 56-day notice. If they have no other local connection and they go to the council where they are now living then it will be that council that has the homeless duties towards them, either because they have a local connection because they are in s95 accommodation or because they are in s98 accommodation and have no connection with any local authority.

But what about these cases? The scramble to close accommodation is causing some problems:

This client has lived in a hotel in (area A) since August 2022, and was granted leave at earlier this year. He has got a range of needs and is well connected to services in the area. He has not yet had notice to leave. The hotel itself is closing mid-April, and people are being moved from it very soon. He has been in touch with the local authority, but what happens if he moves?

Unfortunately, it is pretty clear that unless the local authority in the area has accepted it has a full homelessness duty towards him before he moves to area B, then he will no longer have a connection with that area when he moves. Even if he was in s98 accommodation, once he gets his notice to leave (the 56 days) that is treated as s95 and will create a connection with the area he is moved to and so area A can refer him to B. Although the power to do this is discretionary, most local authorities will make such referrals unless there are special circumstances (and the courts have tended to interpret this very strictly).

But it doesn’t have to be this way:

A family in Hastings contacted the Hastings Buddy Project one Friday afternoon. After two years in their dispersed accommodation, with children at a local school, they won their asylum appeal, and were about to make a homeless application, although they had received no 56-day notice. But that day the housing contractor turned up on the doorstep, with a policeman and a notice to move that day to an address marked simply as “TBA”. The letter said they could question the choice of accommodation within the next 21 days. Rossana Leal, chief executive of The Buddy Project phoned for advice and got the local migrant champion councillor involved, and he turned up. After a tense negotiation, the contractor agreed they could postpone moving until Tuesday and gave them the address, in another area a long way away. Rossana promised to continue supporting the family, and councillor Yunis Smith got on the case and persuaded Hastings Borough Council to accommodate the family. And, he reports, “Mashallah, due to the hard-working council officers, the council got the Home Office to agree to pay.”

Of course the contractor was in trouble for failing to give any notice and arriving with the ridiculous letter with no new address on it. The moral of this is that you can win in this sort of case, but you need a good local organisation to push your case and stand-off with the contractor and the police, and ideally a migrant champion councillor or, if not, just a good one that you can contact easily. Alongside a firm belief that people should be treated with dignity and welcomed into our communities.

Housing shortages would not disappear if migration were halted tomorrow. Read the article here.