Housing infested with mice, rats or bed bugs, asylum seekers given broken beds, families with young children share accommodation with strangers
By Astrid Zweynert
LONDON, Jan 31 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Infested with vermin, furnished with dirty carpets, broken beds and rotten sofas - some of the accommodation Britain provides to asylum seekers is a "disgrace", lawmakers said on Tuesday.
A report by the Home Affairs Committee revealed a catalogue of problems, including children living in accommodation with infestations of mice, rats or bed bugs, and pregnant women and victims of rape and torture lacking adequate support.
Asylum seekers were given broken beds, some had to sleep on the floor for weeks, while families with young children were placed in shared accommodation with strangers, the report said.
"The state of accommodation for some asylum seekers and refugees in this country is a disgrace," said Yvette Cooper, chair of the cross-party committee.
"No one should be living in conditions like that," Cooper said in a statement.
The number of people seeking asylum in Britain is relatively low compared to other European countries. It stood at 41,280 in the year to September 2016.
Germany, the European country with the highest numbers of asylum seekers, received more than 200,000 applications in the third quarter alone.
The committee found that even when accommodation and support are of a good standard, housing is still far too concentrated in Britain's most deprived areas.
It urged the Home Office (interior ministry) to act urgently to raise standards, improve its inspection regime, deal with delays in processing asylum claims and ensure there is adequate funding.
The Home Office said Britain is committed to providing safe and secure accommodation while applications are considered and it "urgently" investigates any complaints.
The government signed contracts with three providers in 2012 to provide accommodation, transport and other related services to asylum seekers.
"We work closely with our contractors to ensure they provide accommodation that is safe, habitable, fit for purpose and adequately equipped and we conduct regular inspections to check that this is the case," the Home Office said in a statement.
Mike Adamson, chief executive of the British Red Cross, said asylum seekers should be allowed to live in dignity, including being provided with safe and secure homes while they await a decision on their claim.
"In our work with asylum seekers, we bear witness to unacceptable accommodation, including mothers who have had to take new born babies back to dirty and infested flats, leading to anguish, distress and possible health consequences," he said in a statement.
Contractors have experienced higher costs than they originally envisaged as the number of asylum seekers coming to Britain has risen along with the cost of accommodation, the report said.
When it drew up the contracts, the Home Office estimated between 20,000 and 25,000 asylum seekers would need to be housed at any one time but more than 38,000 were being accommodated by February 2016, according to the report.
Growing delays in processing asylum seeker applications also contributed to contractors having to house more people than they are paid for, the report said.
(Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit http://news.trust.org)
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