APPENDIX 16
Supplementary memorandum submitted by
Neil Gerrard MP
Further to my letter of 31 October about the
Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry into Home Office removals
policy, there is a further point I would like to draw to your
attention.
In my original letter I did refer to the complete
lack of co-ordination between decision making and enforcement.
This issue has been highlighted for me recently in a conversation
with a worker in an organisation providing accommodation and support
for asylum seekers via contracts with NASS.
He explained to me that his organisation is
contracted to provide a certain number of bedspaces by NASS. At
the point where a negative decision is made on an asylum claim
they receive a letter form NASS telling them that a person is
no longer to be accommodated after a certain date. The responsibility
of removing that person from their accommodation is then left
entirely to them. On occasion people are very resistant to leave.
Since this is not a normal tenancy the usual eviction routes cannot
be followed, and it can develop into an unpleasant situation.
A further consequence is that they find that
someone who they have told to leave does so, but then turns out
to be staying (sleeping on the floor or on a sofa) with someone
else they have accommodated who is a friend. Trying to remove
them from this accommodation is unpleasant and sours relationships
with the person who has been letting them stay. When the organisation
contacts NASS about these problems the response from NASS is that
decisions on asylum claims or on removals are nothing to do with
them but are elsewhere in IND.
His view was that this was the most difficult
aspect by far of their relationship with NASS. He felt strongly
that they should not be left in this invidious position of dealing
with someone who has been cut off from all support by NASS, but
against whom no action at all is being taken by IND, often for
months on end.
November 2002
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