LONDON: The UK government is moving Afghan refugees back into hotels having failed to provide long-term accommodation due by the end of August, the Sunday Times reported.
In May, the Home Office contacted thousands of Afghans in “bridging” accommodation to tell them they would need to vacate their rooms by the end of this month.
“Hotels are not, and were never designed to be, long-term accommodation for Afghans resettled in the UK and it is not in their best interests to be living in hotel accommodation for months or years on end,” a spokesperson said at the time.
The Home Office has tried to repurpose barracks at former army bases as accommodation centers.
The Ministry of Defence told the Times that it has housed refugees in its facilities since 2021, but questions abound over the suitability of some sites for refugees.
With more than 6,000 Afghans still without accommodation before the deadline passes on Thursday, many will now remain in hotels.
The Local Government Association said one in five Afghans leaving hotels are homeless, after the government told them not to apply for council housing in May but to instead use a scheme to find private accommodation.
Sophie Earnshaw from the charity Shelter told the Times: “The government’s guidance and commitments have constantly changed as traumatized families waited, believing they’d be helped to find a home.”
Zabi Niazi, 41, who holds a British passport and fled Afghanistan in 2021 after it fell to the Taliban, was one of those told not to apply for council housing by the government but to instead seek private accommodation.
He is now homeless, along with his wife and children, having approached 23 landlords to no avail.
The only house he was offered was beyond his means to pay for, having not been able to get a job due to the uncertainty of his situation.
“It’s a waste of two years of things that I could have achieved,” he told the Times. “I have not worked because I have thought we will be moved to another place.
“When I asked my daughters, have you made friends in school? They tell me, what’s the point?”
The Home Office told the Times that it had resettled 24,600 people in the UK from Afghanistan who have been given settled status, and that it had provided “extensive support” to those in temporary accommodation. The government is also facing questions after it emerged that a number of Afghans on a program for young leaders, called the Chevening Scholarship, are trapped in Afghanistan and neighboring countries despite qualifying for asylum in the UK.
The Times was told by an anonymous Chevening alumnus he learned by email that he and his family would need to travel to a safe third country to provide biometric data to British authorities to be processed under the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme.
Having done so, he has been left in “limbo” on a three-month visa, with no timeline for whether his ACRS application will be approved before he is deported back to Afghanistan.
“The uncertainty about the relocation timeline, lack of education for our kids, unemployment and lack of financial support have led us to think that we are left in limbo,” he said. “We have no idea what will happen to us next.”
Baroness Helena Kennedy, who helped evacuate 103 female Afghans from the country, said: “Hardly anybody has come in (to the UK via ACRS) this year. I have tried and I’m better connected than most people. It’s impossible to get people in.
“I still get messages every few weeks from people saying, ‘Can you help me to get out? I’m in hiding and my brother has just been killed’.”
The Home Office declined to say how many Chevening scholars have been evacuated from Afghanistan since 2021.
It also did not disclose to the Times how many ACRS applications had been rejected in the same period.
