Liverpool In A Bind Over Homeless Asylum Seekers

Liverpool City Council has revealed that we have a major problem with asylum seekers who travel to the city and have their final appeal hearing rejected – and potentially end up living on the city’s streets. And town hall bosses say the problem is made far worse by the fact that they could be actually be punished for attempting to help and house such people, although this is something the government refutes.

Cllr Paul Brant, Liverpool City Council’s cabinet member for health and social care, told the Liverpool Echo: “Liverpool is one of the few destinations where we process the final appeals for asylum claims and where people have been rejected it means they are then classified as having no recourse to public funds. The position of the local authority is that if they are then rough sleeping because they have no income, we are banned from helping them.”

He suggested that the council could be fined up to £3,000 for helping them using public funds. But this is something the government has denied, arguing that it would never fine councils for helping people on the streets.

However, Section 115 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 states that a person will have ‘no recourse to public funds’ if they are subject to immigration control – which would include those who have failed their asylum bids in Liverpool. In this case, public funds include things like income-based jobseeker’s allowance, income support, child tax credit, universal credit, working tax credit, housing benefit and crucially local authority homelessness assistance or local authority housing. This is the part that Cllr Brant says puts Liverpool City Council in an almost impossible situation. He said: “It seems crazy, partly because its a very visible problem – the people of the city want us to give some kind of support to make sure that people are not rough sleeping.”

Addressing the government directly, he said: “In cities like Liverpool, where we have a large number of people who have their final appeals for asylum dealt with – you’ve got to relax the rules on how we can treat those people. You need to give us additional support and finances so that we can deal with them, or deal with them yourselves – because this is a national government problem. Don’t just dump the problem here in Liverpool and leave us to pick up the pieces – but ban us from dealing with the problem.”

Responding to Cllr Brant’s comments, a Home Office spokesman said the country has a “proud history of providing protection to those who need it and further submissions on protection grounds lodged by failed asylum seekers are carefully considered on their merits, in accordance with our international obligations.”

He added: “Failed asylum seekers must lodge further submissions in person in Liverpool unless there are exceptional circumstances. These submissions are considered as quickly as possible to ensure that money is not spent on those who lodge unfounded claims to secure accommodation and to delay removal.”