Hackney Council abandons pledge to house seven Syrian refugee families by Christmas

Mayor Philip Glanville.

Mayor Philip Glanville will be unable to honour a commitment he made that Hackney will by Christmas take seven Syrian families brought into the UK under the government’s resettlement scheme for refugees.

The total number of families given sanctuary in the borough by the end of this year will be just three, a Town Hall spokesperson today confirmed to the Hackney Citizen, citing Home Office delays.

A further four families are now expected to arrive in Hackney by March 2017.

The delay will come as a blow to organisations like Citizens UK, which has been mobilising to help Syrians granted humanitarian protection after fleeing the country’s catastrophic civil war.

The group finds sympathetic landlords who agree to take a hit on their rental income by letting properties at the housing allowance rate for the first two years refugees’ visas are valid for.

The process of screening applicants as part of the Syrian Resettlement Programme, carried out by the Home Office, is notoriously convoluted.

John Biggs, the directly elected mayor of neighbouring Tower Hamlets, warned earlier this year that progress had been “bloody slow”.

Mayor of Hackney Philip Glanville said: “Hackney has now welcomed 11 refugees as part of Syrian Vulnerable Person Resettlement scheme run by the government, we are proud of the borough’s role as a place of sanctuary, including offering spaces for children from Calais and we are expecting four more families to be re-settled here.

“We have been working closely with the Home Office and local charities to try and ensure all of the expected seven families were resettled in Hackney by Christmas, unfortunately due to Home Office processes we were only able to resettle three families and are expecting the other four to begin arriving in Hackney in the new year.

“We have been assured by the Home Office that they are working as quickly as possible to help speed up the resettlement process for the four families we want to settle in Hackney.”

The UK has agreed to take in 20,000 Syrian refugees by 2020 from camps located outside of the European Union.

Dozens of councils nationwide are participating in the voluntary scheme.

This story was updated at 4:50pm on Thursday 8th December, to add a statement from Mayor Glanville.