North Yorkshire Council
Corporate and Partnerships Overview and Scrutiny Committee
5 June 2023
North Yorkshire Refugee Resettlement
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1 Purpose
1.1 To provide an update and progress report on refugee resettlement in North Yorkshire relating to the United Kingdom Resettlement Scheme and Afghan resettlement programme.
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2. Background
2.1 Global Context
Refugee resettlement involves the transfer of refugees[1] from a country of asylum to another country that has agreed to admit them and ultimately grant them permanent residence.
2.2 Less than 1% of refugees identified by UNHCR are resettled each year[2] and so overwhelmingly, low-income countries, often with intractable socio-economic problems of their own, continue to disproportionately host the largest percentage of refugees from other nations. Many of those countries do not offer a long-term resettlement solution for refugees because they have not signed up to, or only partially signed up to, the UNHCR 1951 Refugee Convention or 1967 Protocol[3]. This means refugees living in those countries have no prospects for local integration and in most cases are not able to work legally and so rely on limited and unreliable financial assistance.
2.3 Many refugees cannot go home because of continued conflict, wars, and persecution. They also face life-endangering situations or have needs that cannot be met in the country where they have sought protection.
2.4 As of mid-2022, the UNHCR calculated that 72% of refugees originate from just five countries: Syria (6.8 million), Venezuela (5.6 million), Ukraine (5.4 million), Afghanistan (2.8 million) and South Sudan (2.4 million). The number of people forcibly displaced from their homes (either internally displaced in their own country or having fled to another country) is estimated to exceed 103 million across the globe.[4] Armed conflicts, violence and human rights violations are the leading causes of displacement followed by disasters, extreme weather events and the other effects of climate change.
2.5 North Yorkshire
Between July 2016 to February 2018 the eight local authorities in North Yorkshire received 238 refugees (50 families) in total under the Home Office’s Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme (VPRS) and Vulnerable Children’s Resettlement Scheme (VCRS). Those families have now reached the end their five-year resettlement support.
2.6 In 2019, the UK government announced a successor scheme to the VPRS and VCRS scheme called the United Kingdom Resettlement Scheme. The intention of this was to introduce a single refugee resettlement scheme for the UK to respond to refugee crises anywhere in the globe. North Yorkshire district councils and the county council responded to the government’s call to participate in the UKRS by agreeing to resettle 200 refugees between 2020 and 2024 on a pro-rata population basis. However, the Covid-19 pandemic delayed the first arrivals in North Yorkshire until February 2021.
2.7 From August 2021 to date North Yorkshire has helped to respond to the evacuation of people from Afghanistan who qualify to come to the UK under one of three categories under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP)[5], or the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme[6]. This has involved permanently resettling families and co-ordinating the service provision to the Afghan families in two ‘bridging accommodation’ hotels in North Yorkshire whilst they await to be moved to permanent housing elsewhere in the UK.
2.8 Since February 2022 North Yorkshire has experienced the arrival of families from Ukraine, initially in relation to households who arrived through the Ukraine Family Scheme[7] and then through the Homes for Ukraine scheme[8]. Those schemes work in a different way to previous refugee resettlement schemes, so are not covered in further detail in this report. A separate report on North Yorkshire’s response to the Ukrainian crisis could be submitted to a future committee meeting on request.
2.9 Separate to the Homes for Ukraine scheme, a community sponsorship scheme has been in existence in the UK since 2016. This has allowed community groups including charities, faith groups, churches, and businesses to resettle refugees in the UK, providing they meet qualifying criteria[9]. A community sponsorship group in Settle was the first in North Yorkshire (and in the region) to do so and since then has been followed by Pateley Bridge and Ripon. Community sponsorship groups in Scarborough and Thirsk are currently applying to the scheme.
2.10 In January 2021, following China’s clampdown of political freedoms in Hong Kong, the UK government opened the Hong Kong British National (Overseas) (BN(O)) route – a UK-wide welcome programme to support the integration of new arrivals from Hong Kong. BN(O) status is a form of British nationality created for people from Hong Kong who were born prior to the handover of Hong Kong in 1997 so they could retain ties to the UK after Hong Kong’s handover to China. Those with BN(O) status and their eligible family members can apply to come to the UK to live, study and work and then after five years in the UK will be able to apply for settlement, followed by British citizenship after a further twelve months.[10] Local authorities have a limited role in terms of support provision, chiefly in relation to providing English language classes for the adults (if required) and destitution support. The Hong Kong BN(O) scheme is not covered in further detail in this report due to its minimal impact to date in North Yorkshire.
3 United Kingdom Resettlement Scheme (UKRS)
3.1 General overview – North Yorkshire
Planned UKRS arrivals into North Yorkshire continued throughout 2022 and into 2023. However, local authorities are now waiting for Ministerial sign-off to allow new family cases to be provided. A range of existing cases previously sent to local authorities by the Home Office have not been able to be placed due to family size or because they require complex support needs that cannot be met in the local area. With no new cases being brought forward by the Home Office at present, it means that what was originally intended to be the key safe and legal route for resettlement in the UK, is currently on-hold.
3.2 At the time of writing this report, North Yorkshire has resettled 163 persons (42 families) under the UKRS across six of the former North Yorkshire districts. One person has subsequently moved out of county on a permanent basis. Preparations are underway to receive a further two UKRS families. Beyond that future participation in the scheme is uncertain and so the original agreed target of 200 persons by 2024 might not be achieved.
|
District |
UKRS target by 2024 |
Actual number of UKRS persons resettled |
Number of UKRS persons remaining in North Yorkshire |
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Craven |
19 |
0 |
0 |
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Hambleton |
30 |
30 |
30 |
|
Harrogate |
52 |
57 |
57 |
|
Richmondshire |
17 |
17 |
17 |
|
Ryedale |
18 |
10 |
10 |
|
Scarborough |
35 |
21 |
21 |
|
Selby |
29 |
28 |
27 |
|
Total |
200 |
163 |
162 |
3.3 The bulk of the UKRS arrivals to date in North Yorkshire have been Syrians, reflecting the fact that Syrians remain the largest refugee group. However, as part of the scheme we have also resettled a small number of Iraqis, Afghan Hazara, Sudanese and South Sudanese.
3.4 Where possible we try to ensure that newer arrivals have a similar cultural background and language to earlier arrivals within a given district (typically Arabic speakers). However even where this has not been the case there continue to be examples of existing refugee families helping to support new arrivals. This new dynamic of support has not only allowed the new arrivals to feel more settled but in turn has led the existing families to reflect on how far they themselves have progressed since arriving in the UK. Some of the earlier arrivals have become official volunteers trained by the Refugee Council.
3.5 The period of resettlement support for VPRS/VCRS/UKRS refugees has been for five years. From 2022/23, the period of support was anticipated to be reduced to three years, to make it in line with the support period provided to Afghans resettled through the ARAP and ACRS schemes. However, this has not happened.
3.6 As with the VPRS and VCRS ‘legacy’ schemes and the ARAP and ACRS schemes, the UKRS scheme is intended to be fully funded by the UK government. However due to idiosyncrasies within the Home Office funding arrangements the local authority does not receive funding for an individual in Years 2 to 5 (or Years 2 to 3 for the Afghan schemes) if they move out of the local authority area prior to that year of support ending. Local authorities are instead asked to contact and claim back some of the funding from the local authority that the family has moved to. This only works though where the new local authority is willing to provide the integration support to the individual, otherwise neither local authority receives funding. We have raised this with the Home Office as an unfair arrangement. It also contrasts with the funding arrangements for the Homes for Ukraine scheme overseen by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC).
3.7 The Home Office is now many months behind schedule in paying local authorities for the resettlement support provided to individuals resettled under the UKRS scheme (and the Afghan resettlement schemes). This also includes exceptional needs expenditure for people with complex needs, typically persons with SEND.
4 Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP)/Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme
4.1 General Overview – North Yorkshire
To date North Yorkshire has resettled 138 persons (30 families) under the Afghan resettlement schemes. From that figure five persons (one family) have moved out of county.
|
District |
Original target number |
Actual number of persons resettled |
Number of persons remaining in North Yorkshire |
|
Craven |
15 |
14 |
14 |
|
Hambleton |
20 |
30 |
30 |
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Harrogate |
25 |
30 |
30 |
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Richmondshire |
45 |
43 |
43 |
|
Selby |
23 |
21 |
16 |
|
Totals |
128 |
138 |
133 |
4.2 The ARAP scheme remains open for people eligible to come to the UK. However, the UK government is, with very limited exceptions, not authorising new arrivals unless they have been allocated a property in the UK before arriving. The government is also intending to close all the Afghan bridging hotels in the UK by late October 2023.
4.3 There are still an estimated 4600 Afghans (including spouses and dependants) eligible to come to the UK under the ARAP scheme. The nature of the rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan (Operation Pitting) meant that they were not able to be evacuated in time before the Taliban takeover. Meanwhile the situation in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate.
4.4 North Yorkshire County Council’s Executive agreed on 14 February 2023 to use 10 additional Service Family Accommodation properties in Catterick Garrison for eligible Afghan citizens currently residing in Afghanistan or in third countries seeking relocation to the UK under the ARAP. Planning is now underway for those families to arrive by September 2023. The families will subsequently be moved into permanent housing should they decide to stay in the county.
4.5 Bridging accommodation hotels
A new element of resettlement arising from Operation Pitting was in relation to providing support to Afghan families in two ‘bridging accommodation’ hotels in the county.
4.6 It was the Home Office’s decision to use the hotels, but local partner agencies led by North Yorkshire County Council were required to put in place services to support the families, and at short notice.
4.7 New families continued to arrive at the two bridging accommodation hotels in North Yorkshire in 2022 but at a considerably slower pace and in much smaller numbers than was the case in Autumn 2021. One of the hotels closed at the end of July 2022 as part of the Home Office’s rationalisation of the hotel estate and following concerns raised by North Yorkshire County Council about the hotel’s rural isolation and poor access to services. To date, 549 people have been supported across the two hotels in the county.
4.8 Whilst over 9,000 Afghans have been supported into settled homes nationally as part of the ARAP and ACRS schemes, around 8,000 Afghans remain in bridging accommodation in the UK.
4.9 Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, the Rt. Honourable Johnny Mercer MP, made an Oral Statement to Parliament on 28 March 2023 highlighting the Government’s commitment to support Afghan families and individuals out of bridging hotels and into settled accommodation.[11]
4.10 The UK government’s current plans are that all bridging hotels in the UK will close by this Autumn. This timeline is subject to change.
4.11 The Home Office expects families to lead the way in finding accommodation. Where an offer of accommodation can be made through Home Office allocations, it will now only be one offer (reduced from two previously). If families have not sourced accommodation by the hotel closure date, they may need to access advice and support through homelessness provision.
4.12 The remaining bridging hotel in North Yorkshire is scheduled to close in August 2023. Families have been given notice to quit and have three months to leave the hotel before they are made homeless.
4.13 Additional funding is being made available by the Home Office to help move people in the bridging hotels into private rented housing. However, challenges remain around longer-term affordability due to the benefit cap impacting upon large households and, up to this point, unwillingness amongst some Afghans to move to areas outside of their preferred locations, typically large cities.
4.14 DLUHC has also made funding available to local authorities through the Local Authority Housing Fund to provide housing for Ukrainian and Afghan evacuees. This includes a ringfenced element to help move some of the larger Afghan households in the hotels into four-bedroom properties, which for North Yorkshire equates to three properties. A second round of funding has been announced but no detail has been provided yet to local authorities at the time of writing.
4.15 The Home Office is now ramping up its messaging to Afghan households about the implications of not accepting the single housing offer. Our housing options team in Scarborough is also going into the hotel to speak to the hotel residents in that regard. Alongside this we have employed a social enterprise to help families search for and secure private rented housing in the UK.
4.16 We are currently investigating what our approach should be should there be persons remaining in the bridging hotel on the day of closure, and what our legal duties are in respect of homelessness legislation to this client group.
5 UKRS and Afghan resettlement service provision
5.1 Integration Support
UKRS and Afghan families resettled into permanent housing in North Yorkshire continue to have the benefit of the Refugee Council to assist with day-to-day issues. The support is particularly intensive in the first 18 months of a family’s resettlement. For the remainder of the three years support, the focus is on building up the independence of the adults to encourage them to do more things for themselves so that they do not experience a ‘cliff edge’ of support once their resettlement period has ended. Drop-in meetings are held on a frequent basis in towns where there have been new arrivals from 2021. Briefings on a range of topics relating to life in the UK have been made and some areas have women’s groups supported by volunteers.
5.2 English Classes
Adults with a poor to moderate understanding of English have access to 8hpwk formal language learning (ESOL) each week in their local area. This includes face to face lessons in classrooms as well as online sessions: the split being six hours classroom/two hours online. In addition to ESOL, learners can study supplementary subjects such as ICT, Life in North Yorkshire, and Pathway into Maths, where not only do they learn new skills, but they also have the chance to practice their English conversation. An online learning platform called ‘Flash Academy’ has also been introduced to help support and accelerate progress.
5.3 North Yorkshire Council’s Adult Learning and Skills Service (ALSS) provides the classes but encourages the young adults to attend a College of Further Education so that they can pursue vocational-related training. This also has the benefit of being able to expand their social circle. In one area of the county, ALSS has recently arranged bespoke provision for a small group of 16- to 18-year-olds, as college places were unavailable until new academic year begins, September 2023.
5.4 In some parts of the county volunteers run conversational classes, either in groups or on a one-to-one basis. This helps supplement North Yorkshire Council’s formal provision and provides invaluable befriending support to the families and wider connections in their town. Volunteers also help with some of the classroom lessons giving learners further opportunity to take part in real-world, local, British English as well as providing invaluable encouragement and support.
5.5 English as an Additional Language (EAL) support in schools
A small team of staff based in the Children and Young People’s Services Directorate provide EAL support to schools and facilitate communications between parents and their children’s schools. This includes amongst other aspects, providing EAL guidance and resources for teachers, providing briefings and an ongoing point of contact for advice and support for teachers and parents. The number of families and schools that the team support has increased substantially due to the Afghan arrivals in 2021 and the arrival of children from Ukraine in 2022 and 2023. Accordingly, additional staff have been recruited.
5.6 Employment
Progress in getting the UKRS and Afghan adults into employment continues but has been slower than anticipated for some of the more highly qualified Afghans. We are finding that although the spoken English of the Afghan males is generally good, their written understanding is less so. This impacts upon their ability to provide good quality employment applications and to perform well in written tests in interviews.
5.7 Jobs range from professional (a minority of cases) to the bulk being in semi-skilled or low-skilled employment.
5.8 Barriers to getting into employment continue to be the lack of skills match; physical and mental health problems; high levels of competition for jobs from people educated in the UK; and poor understanding of the English language, particularly for the UKRS refugees.
5.9 Utilising the Home Office grant, North Yorkshire Council continues to fund one full-time member of staff in the HR Resourcing Solutions team to provide employment support to the working age adults. This also involves the provision of relevant training to validate existing skills and to provide additional skills and training. A full report is contained in Appendix 1.
5.10 Scarborough Job Centre has worked closely with the working-age adults in the bridging hotel in Scarborough to help them secure local paid employment. Subsequently there has been a good take-up rate, especially in jobs in the hospitality sector. Several of the men undertook and passed the Security Industry Authority (SIA) training, enabling them to gain an SIA licence to work in the industry. Some of those who secured local employment in the Scarborough area with national hotel chains were able to transfer jobs within the same company to their preferred location in the UK. Morrisons supermarket has also expressed an interest in providing transfers. Having an offer of employment to go to also made it easier for those individuals to secure private rented housing if their hours of work in their new job meant that they would no longer incur the benefit cap.
· Health and social care services:
5.11 All family members are registered with a local GP practice and provided with a medical health assessment when they first arrive in North Yorkshire. This also included the Afghan families in the bridging accommodation hotels. NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) are reimbursed by the Home Office for primary and secondary health care costs for the first 12 months after a family has arrived in the UK.
5.12 North Yorkshire Council can claim back funding from the Home Office for ‘exceptional costs’ relating to an individual’s social care support and for the initial costs of special needs provision. However, in common with other local authorities, we are experiencing long delays in the Home Office reimbursing us those costs.
5.13 Several families continue to access counselling support through the regional children and families’ specialist mental health service provided by Solace. This provision allows clients to be fast-tracked for support from trained counsellors (with interpreters) experienced in supporting survivors of persecution and exile.
5.14 Volunteer Support
There are refugee support groups in most of the towns where refugees have been resettled in North Yorkshire. They provide additional invaluable support including befriending support to the families. Some of the volunteers are Refugee Council trained volunteers assisted by a Refugee Council Volunteer Co-ordinator.
5.15 Volunteers have helped families feel more settled in their local area and helped them to develop wider links in their local area. Some volunteers for instance have signposted families to clubs and activities. Volunteers have also provided conversational English sessions and organised trips and activities. An example is the ‘Loving Earth - Healing Through Creativity’, community textile project, which brought together Syrian, Iraqi, Afghan and English women in the Richmond/Catterick Garrison area to socialise and learn new craft skills. This culminated in them collaborating on an exhibition, which was showcased at The Station in Richmond earlier this year.
5.16 Wrap-around Support Provided in the Bridging Accomodation Hotel
The range of support includes:
· Supporting new arrivals to get their children into local schools as quickly as possible and providing ongoing support and guidance to schools.
· Wrap-around support provided by the Refugee Council. This centres upon helping families with a range of general enquiries and putting them in contact with relevant agencies.
· Scarborough Job Centre staff arranging the Universal Credit Claims, providing general advice on employment and training in the UK, providing a course on ESOL for employment across three cohorts (beginner/upper-beginner and advanced level) and signposting to paid employment in the local area.
· Mental health support provided through a tailored approach of group sessions on a range of topics and where required followed up with 1-2-1 support.
· North Yorkshire Youth and North Yorkshire Sport providing a range of activities for the children and young people, including at weekends and on an evening during the week. Some of the men joined Ravenscar Cricket Club and some of the women joined Wykeham Cricket Club, helping to improve the cricketing success of those teams!
· English language classes (ESOL) for the adults provided by our Adult Learning and Skills Service. The learners have progressed well, which is to be commended as the hotel is not always an environment conducive to learning. Attendance levels have been good, and the Flash Academy platform was also used as additional support with learning. In addition to the hotel ESOL classes, Functional Skills English Level 2 was delivered to a group of 15 learners, mostly doctors and other medical professionals, in a classroom outside of the hotel. All those learners were successful in achieving their Level 2 English qualification, which should support them to successfully pass their IELTS language test. Passing the IELTS language test is a necessary requirement to allow people from overseas to work in the health profession in the UK.
· A Friday crafts class arranged by our Adult Learning and Skills Service for the women in the hotel. This was a varied programme and was led by the learners and what they were interested in trying. These sessions were well attended and included crafts such as quilting, card making, decoupage and paper bunting design. It gave learners another opportunity to practice English conversation, encouraged social interaction, taught learners’ new skills and knowledge and helped promote general wellbeing – crafting is known to help relieve stress and anxiety and helps with concentration.
6. Key Implications
6.1 Local Member: None.
6.2 Financial: There are no additional financial implications to North Yorkshire Council arising directly from this report. The Home Office funds the UKRS and Afghan refugee resettlement schemes in North Yorkshire.
6.3 Human Resources: There are no additional human resources implications to North Yorkshire Council arising directly from this report. North Yorkshire Council employs staff on the refugee resettlement programme, but they are funded through the Home Office grant.
6.4 Legal: There are no legal implications to North Yorkshire Council arising directly from this report. The UKRS and Afghan refugee resettlement schemes are voluntary schemes. However, participating local authorities are required to meet specific obligations set out in the funding instruction to local authorities from the Home Office.
6.5 Equalities: None.
6.6 Environmental Impacts/Benefits including Climate Change Impact Assessment - No Impact.
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7 Recommendation:
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Jonathan Spencer
Refugee Resettlement Manager
North Yorkshire Council
23 May 2023
Appendix 1: North Yorkshire Council Refugee Employability Project.
Background documents: None.