Get Legal Advice
Information about our services and how to get advice.
Legal Information
Our self-help resources and resources for professionals, designed to help you, or help you support others.
Campaigns
We campaign for a future which allows people to move and to belong, free from the harm of immigration controls.
Latest News
Find all of our latest news and updates as well as our archive of media appearances.
About us
Learn about who we are at GMIAU: our values, our history, our team and our impact.
Get involved
Find opportunities to work or volunteer with us, ways to make a difference by donating, and how to get in touch.
Asylum accommodation
Everyone, no matter where they are from, needs a safe place to call home.
How people are housed while waiting for an asylum decision
Everyone, no matter where they are from, needs a safe place to call home. However, thousands of people in our region who have come to the UK fleeing war and persecution instead face prison-like conditions.
People seeking sanctuary in the UK are generally not allowed to support themselves by working while waiting for a decision on their asylum claim. Instead, they are forced to rely on the government for accommodation and support.
Since 2000, this has been siloed off from mainstream housing and benefits, and is instead provided through a parallel welfare system managed by the Home Office. People are ‘dispersed’ on a no-choice basis anywhere in the UK – usually to areas where accommodation is cheap. While initially accommodation was delivered by local authorities, since 2013, the Home Office has contracted private companies – Serco in the North West – to provide accommodation.
Life in dispersed accommodation has long felt isolated. Housing is often in a poor state of repair. It is extremely hard to raise a complaint.
Since the pandemic, things have got worse as Home Office failings have led to a dramatic increase in the long-term use of institutional accommodation – hotels, camps or barracks, rather than houses. Today, far too many people in our region are trapped in hotels, segregated from communities and increasingly the target of far-right violence.
While people in asylum accommodation are enduring what many describe as prison-like conditions, private companies are profiting millions from their misery. Meanwhile, successive Home Secretaries have used the visibility and public controversy around asylum accommodation to justify increasingly punitive asylum policies.
It doesn’t have to be this way: an alternative vision of asylum accommodation is possible.
What we need to see:
1. People housed in communities.
People seeking sanctuary need homes in communities while they rebuild their lives. They must not be segregated in institutional accommodation like hotels, barracks or other large sites.
2. A locally-managed model of asylum accommodation that prioritises people over profits.
Private companies are making millions from the failed for-profit model that serves no one. A decentralised, not-for-profit model, led by local government and responding to local needs, would improve conditions for people seeking sanctuary and allow them to participate fully as members of their new communities.
3. Timely and high-quality asylum decisions.
Many people are facing unacceptable delays waiting for decisions or appeals, leaving them stuck in asylum accommodation. They need timely decisions with a focus on getting the decision right first time, so that people aren’t forced into the lengthy appeals process
4. A system-wide approach that prioritises dignity, compassion and welcome.
From housing officers managing accommodation to politicians making decisions about how accommodation will be delivered, we need a system that sees people as human beings first and foremost. It must not be weaponised, as it is now, as a tool in the politics of divide and rule.
5. A supportive move-on process.
When people leave asylum accommodation, they should be set up to rebuild their life as flourishing members of our society, with support to access employment, housing and welfare. People must never be evicted into street homelessness.
Voices from asylum hotels
Too often the voices of people in asylum hotels are shouted over and forgotten. The Greater Manchester Asylum Hotels Group have come together to change this. Before their formation, in 2023 we published a blog series, Voices from Asylum Hotels, exploring people’s experiences of hotel accommodation.
Asylum hotels: the outcome of Home Office failures
"The hotel, I’m telling you now, the hotel is the same like a prison. You go in there, you stay there, from Monday to Sunday you’re just inside there."
Food and conditions
"No, it’s not healthy. All of them are fried food, frozen food. It’s not fresh."
Staff, rules, surveillance and abandonment
"Knock, ‘CHECK ROOM’. They shout like this."
Waiting without end
"A lot of people in this hotel one year, two month – not transfer. I’ve been six months. Not transfer, nothing."
Futures
"When my paper coming, I will work, I will make a new life."
Housing justice for all
Asylum accommodation must be seen in the context of the housing injustice faced by so many in our communities, stemming from a housing crisis that has been decades in the making. It’s a crisis caused by 15 years of austerity; the decimation of social housing; the deregulation of the Private Rented Sector; the lack of affordable housing. Everyone suffers.
This crisis has created fertile ground for far-right political opportunists to stoke anger towards people seeking safety: obscuring the true causes of the housing crisis and pinning the blame on the racialised ‘others’ who are seeking safety here.
With the Greater Manchester Housing Justice Network we are calling for housing justice for all, and an end to the politics of division.
Statement of solidarity
While all forms of asylum accommodation have faced attack from the far right, in Greater Manchester there has been a particular focus on hotels. Over 80 voluntary and community organisations came together to send a message to people living in asylum hotels: you are welcome in our communities.
Further reading
We are proud to work with many others who are researching and campaigning for a better model of asylum accommodation.
Homes4All
We are members of the Homes4All Coalition, a cross-sector coalition of housing, migrant and refugee organisations that campaigns for safe and secure homes for everyone in the UK.
Report: Transforming Asylum Accommodation
IPPR's 2024 report calls for an end to the ineffective use of resources on unsuitable accommodation and proposes a reimagined approach to asylum housing.
Report: Laying the foundations
Refugee Action’s report and briefing call for a community-investment model of asylum housing, which will benefit everyone in need of a decent home.
Report: Hostile Housing
This report from Migrants Organise and Medact argues that the “for-profit model” is delivering an agenda of hostility which is contributing “triple trauma”: trauma from conflict, trauma during migration, and trauma induced by Britain’s hostile asylum system.
Latest Campaigns
Share on Social Media
-
Greater Manchester Asylum Hotels Group
We are not looking for luxury, just a basic space we can call home, where we can live with dignity.
-
Community safety
For our communities to be safe, we need an end to hostile immigration policy and the politics of divide and rule.
-
Destitution
No one should be forced into destitution based on where they are from.
Sign up to our Newsletter
Get resources, news, events and more directly to your mailbox. You can unsubscribe at anytime.