On 22.12.21 at 10:25 AM LUCIE HEATH wrote in Inside Housing, According to her opinion:
According to data collected from London boroughs, some 4,000 people who were evacuated from Afghanistan throughout the summer will be staying in temporary hotel accommodation in London for the Christmas period.
The London Councils, which represents local governments in the capital, wants to see “quicker progress” on relocating Afghan families into permanent housing because the current hotel accommodations are “unsuitable.”
According to the UK government, British troops evacuated about 15,000 people from Afghanistan in August of this year as the Taliban quickly gained control of the country.
As local authorities around the UK struggled to find enough adequate accommodation to host the amount of refugees and migrants, many of these people were transferred into so-called bridging hotels.
London Councils has discovered that around 4,000 of these Long-term housing has been provided for roughly 4,000 Afghans, according to Victoria Atkins, the minister for Afghan resettlement, and 6,000 children have been enrolled in school.
Darren Rodwell, deputy chair of London Councils, stated local authorities across the country are working “closely with the Home Office and other government departments to ensure Afghan evacuees get the care and the support they need”.
“However, five months on from Operation Pitting [the evacuation], London boroughs want to see faster progress on moving the roughly 4,000 evacuees in the capital into suitable longer-term homes. Hotel accommodation is not suitable for families and local services are struggling to cope with demand,”
Ms Atkins said: “We will continue to work with local authorities and the private rented sector to secure permanent homes for Afghan families so they can settle and integrate into the local community and rebuild their lives.
“To provide long-term security, it is important we take the appropriate time and effort to find families homes that suits their needs, including taking into account family size and any vulnerabilities.”
In October, it was revealed that at least 200 Afghan families who had been evacuated had applied to local governments to become homeless.
This was partly due to the fact that the families included British nationals, and it was unclear if they would receive the same degree of assistance as individuals who were eligible for the government’s Afghan citizen schemes at the time.
The government has now confirmed that evacuees who are British citizens will receive the same assistance as those who are coming to the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy, which is for Afghans who previously worked with the British government, and the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme, which is for Afghans identified as being most at risk under the Taliban.
The confirmation, along with the government’s decision to raise the support available to Afghans from one year to three years, was welcomed by London councils.
However, it noted that due to their duties for refugees and asylum seekers living in the area, London boroughs are already under enormous strain in terms of housing and local services.
London boroughs are housing and supporting tens of thousands of asylum seekers in emergency hotels, as well as almost one-third of all unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in England, according to London Councils.