A fall in asylum applications revealed this week does not mean an end to the challenge of finding accommodation for new arrivals to the UK, the Housing Associations’ Charitable Trust has said.

The Home Office revealed on Tuesday that there were 7920 asylum applications between April and June this year, a fall of 11% compared with the previous three months.

The reduction in applications may ease demand in some asylum seeker dispersal areas, but the figures do not take into account other categories of new migrants, said HACT director Heather Petch.

“We expected to see this fall,” she said. “The National Asylum Support Service has been gearing up for it.

“But there is still a great need for lots of short-term accommodation for migrant workers.”

She said the Home Office’s figures did not tell the whole story. “Economic migration [as opposed to forced migration] isn’t necessarily going down at all.”

She said the issue of migrant accommodation was most pressing in the east of England, where foreign workers were typically employed in food processing and agriculture.

Migrant workers often experience discrimination and poor housing conditions (HT 16 May 2003, page 26).

Source

Housing Today