Many thanks to Rob from Burnley for donating various furniture to the asylum seekers and refugees. In fact, he gave so much that we had to go twice from Burnley to Rochdale with it all. – We also took a car full from Blackshaw Head and moved a refugee family’s belongings from one house to a flat.
Asylum seekers can be moved from one accommodation to another several times, which creates a lot of problems for them, partly because they have to arrange the transport of their belonging themselves, which they can ill afford and do not have access to cars and vans. Taxi drivers usually refuse to do this type of transport.
When an asylum seeker is given permission to stay in the UK by the Home Office (becoming a recognised refugee) the asylum seeker will be given 28 days notice to find alternative accommodation – not offered alternative accommodation. Most of them will not know that they have to contact their local council’s homeless office to get help finding new accommodation.
If the local authority does not have any spare suitable accommodation available at that time they will have to offer accommodation in another local authority. This could be a B&B where it is not possible to cook!
This happened to one of our families where the children continued to go to school in their previous local authority. So one of the parents had to travel with the children to school every day – at great extra financial cost – at wait six hours for the children to finish school.
After many months the family was eventually moved back to their previous local authority – to the same housing estate they lived on when they were asylum seekers.