thread for those interested in refugee hosting/sponsorship

[EezyOozy]

I thought I would start a new thread about this as I have just heard on BBC news that they are opening up a web form tomorrow to express interest. Apparently families/households can claim £350 a month (I assume for increased expenses) and refugees will be eligible to claim or benefits and work. We have large a spare room but live rurally so whilst I will express interest I'm not sure we will be taken up on it.

I thought I would start a new thread for those who are interested and to follow the progress of the registration procedure/how this pans out in practice.

Posted here because it's the only place I know gets plenty traffic, I will probably be asking for this to be moved but don't know where to.

Sorry, I should have said, have been living in Ukraine and be an immediate family member of a Ukrainian.

I phoned the helpline this morning and was told they 'probably' do have my uploaded documents despite the fact they appear to have disappeared on the website. So, we'll see.

In other news, I submitted the son's application on Saturday and Mum's more complicated application 2 days ago and I got a call today from someone (I think she said First Response) saying she's coming to my house tomorrow to do a suitability check and go through some forms with me. She apologised for the short notice but said they've just been told they've got to get all the home visits done and their paperwork uploaded by Monday!

It looks like the media attention on how slow and difficult the whole process is, might actually be working in terms of getting the government to speed things up. Unless this is just a prelude to them saying, well we might have only granted 25,000 visas to the 4m ukrainian refugees, but we've pre-approved 100,000 sponsor homes for them to live in.....

I got a letter from the council saying they want to do DBS checks and then a home inspection. No mention of what to do if you already have a DBS certificate, which all three of us do. So have emailed to ask. They appear to be tying the home inspection and DBS checks into the £350 payment, which makes sense I guess. If you dither around and don't get your checks done, it won't delay the visas but it will mean no money.

We think we're going to share a little of the £350 with DD (18) when it comes through to recognise that she's going to be sharing her home with them too and hopefully helping the 17 year old to settle in.

No word on visas yet, but DH has just come down with covid today, so I'm kind of hoping they don't come through just yet.

They redo DBS checks I'm afraid Firefliess, even if you're already checked.

@DesdamonasHandkerchief

They redo DBS checks I'm afraid Firefliess, even if you're already checked.

That's so stupid. The whole point of the DBS system when it came in replacing the previous child protection certificates was that you only had to do it once and could then give access to the certificate to anyone you wanted. Hoping that maybe it'll depend on your local authority and ours won't be so silly?

Agreed it's totally dumb!

.

Anyone got any progress to report? None here. We will try to get our MP to chase it first thing on Monday. Seems to me a good thing if a lot of MPs are made properly aware of the problems with this.

No news yet here. I don't know anyone locally who's visas have come through yet

Still only one of the three received their visas for us. I feel embarrassed that it's taking so long. If I were them I'd give up and go to a more welcoming country.

MP emailed.
As far as I can see the people who have got results are the ones who have helpful MPs. Don’t know if mine will be (he’s not exactly Mr Cares About Vulnerable People) but worth a try.

We are on day 12 and not a sausage. I emailed my MP last night and he did reply to say he will "see what he can find out tomorrow (today)" .... not sure how much difference it will make but he did say that the situation I outlined was terrible.

Hi - has anyone had a visa approval issued yet? And if so, does the sponsor name appear on the letter? Our guest filled out their applications but I realised when the mother sent them after she'd submitted them that she's got our name wrong. I have tried the helpline to see if we can amend the applications (we can't) but they can't tell me if this means they will be rejected outright or she will have a chance to change it when it comes to the review stage. The helpline is completely unhelpful, and seems a complete waste of resources.

No news, have re-sent the email to my mp.

@LaurelGrove I made a mistake on one of our forms. I rang the helpline and was told that if there are any inconsistencies or missing info etc they will contact us to clarify. He said they won’t reject applications for things like that; they know it’s all very difficult and will work with applicants to get the permission letters through where they possibly can. So it might delay your application a bit, but shouldn’t be disastrous.

I’m on day 14 with no news. I emailed my MP yesterday and she responded very quickly asking for further info, so we’ll see what happens. She’s a Tory and does not have a great voting record when it comes to refugees though, so I’m not holding my breath.

Oh Venus that is excellent news. She has a copy of my documents so I hope that it will indeed be the case that she can just submit that to get it ironed out. The council know and have updated my records at their end for DBS checks, so that's something - I'm expecting a home visit today. They said when they called that it was chaos and they are operating more or less in the absence of any government guidance but are just trying to get on with it.

MP replied. MP was helpful. Answer they got from home office was not.

Apparently our application is on hold because they are waiting for our British passport.

This makes so little sense. If there was something missing in the application why was it accepted as complete? Why didn’t they tell us or the Ukrainian there was something missing or unacceptable?

And as people on the Facebook group have pointed out, they have not been asked for passports and have received visas without submitting them.

As you may know, there is no facility to add material to the application once it has been submitted. So I rang the helpline and they said the only thing I could do was to get back to my MP and ask him to ask UKVI to ask me for the documentation

On the positive side someone has put a rocket up the arse of my council and they are coming to do my home check on Friday.

I haven't provided any ID as part of my guest's application - I thought it was odd when she told me she hadn't needed it, but the helpline told me it wasn't required. Shame as that would have clarified the mistake she made when filling in the application.
The Home Office should be ashamed of itself. I realise that setting up a scheme on this scale is not straightforward but there are so many basic errors with what they have done.

It is shameful that the form isn't in both English and Ukrainian - that would have been the work of a few hours to do and would have avoided mistakes being made. It should have been possible for host and guest to complete their own parts of the form jointly (easy from a tech perspective and surely more secure and less error prone). And the helpline could actually be helpful, rather than just a waste of 20 minutes.

I have had dealings with the Home Office before when it comes to immigration. It's almost as if they don't want anyone to come....

I had my home check done today - all very straightforward. They checked the bedroom, my smoke alarms, the heating and drinking water and asked a few questions about who lives here.

After much pleading with my MP to do what he can to help move our case along, we got an email from the local council asking to start the home checks and enhanced dbs process.

Well we've just had some negative news. Had our house checked last week and all was fine. Turns out the council aren't doing a co-ordinated approach as they're getting this dumped on them and asked to turn it around urgently, so that was just because one of our guests is a child. We also need the housing standards team to inspect and potentially also adult social services!

Anyway, housing standards came today and said that the bedroom we were intending to use (which fits a double bed and wardrobe in - though we would be using bunkbeds as it's mother and son) is too small. It needs to be 10.2m square minimum and it's only 8.4m square so the guy said he couldn't approve our property for 2 people, but we could host 1 person as in all other respects there's no issues.

He couldn't give any information on what that means for the mum and son we've agreed to sponsor, whose visa applications have been submitted with all of our details on. Left with nothing but questions - Will they get rejected and have to start again, if they're going to stay with a different UK sponsor? Should they find someone else now and immediately start reapplying or wait for their visas to come through and then apply. I want to try and get answers to those questions before I tell our intended guest this bad news as she's really struggling atm, and I don't want to dump another problem in her lap, particularly not one that she won't be able to find the answers to.

I've emailed my local MP asking her if she can try and get answers to some of these questions but it wouldn't surprise me if the government don't know themselves, what happens now as they haven't thought that far ahead. I don't recall seeing this covered in the FAQs when really, it should have been. There's bound to be quite a few instances of the accommodation or potential hosts themselves proving to be unsuitable.

Oh how frustrating @Shiloh . There's absolutely nothing in the guidance that tells you how big rooms need to be so how are you supposed to know? Could you claim that you're giving them a different room (eg your own or another room?) Might be worth contacting a local support group, to see if they could find another local host for yours or swap them with someone? Or this organisation has a helpline I think: www.refugee-action.org.uk/sanctuary/

I don't think the council checks are actually linked to the visa application process, so think your guests may get approved anyway, but you won't be able to get the payment for hosting them if you've failed the home inspection. Could you maybe get approved to host just one of them (the mum)? I'm not sure what anyone would then do about the son. They wouldn't be taking him into care because his bedroom is a bit small, I'm sure of that!

Seems crazy bureaucracy to me - there are tens of thousands of households across the country who are more overcrowded than what you're proposing, including families that the council will have placed in temporary housing themselves.

Thanks @Firefliess - we've had a bit of luck. I asked the Housing Standards chap to call me back as I wanted to talk to him after rechecking the FAQs on the government website re accommodation requirements as they suggest flexibility but read as if it's for each local Council to interpret that as they will (certainly no mention of minimum sizes and it is honestly not a tiny room, it's a double). Anyway, he'd already been checking the Housing Act 1985 legislation and speaking to his colleagues about it before he called me back and confirmed that he is going to approve the property after all. He can do this because of the son's age means he counts as "half a unit" so he can share a room with a parent/sibling as long as it's at least 8.36m square - so we just meet that.

He also confirmed my suspicions that each local authority will be interpreting what is needed differently. The government have given them no guidance so my council are going strictly off the sizing in the existing legislation but other councils may take a less (or I suppose more) restrictive approach. I'm including that so as to reassure anyone else in a similar situation - you might find your council has no issues at all, regardless of ages of the guests.

I'm so glad I don't have to tell our intended guests that our house has fallen through!