Responding to the Government’s announcement that an annual cap on
the number of refugees accepted in the UK will launch in January
2025, Cllr Shaun Davies, Chair of the Local Government
Association, said:
“Councils work hard to protect and support refugees and help
deliver a wide range of government asylum and resettlement
schemes, so it is right that local government is engaged in
planning for future resettlement to the UK.
“However, we have raised concerns about councils being asked to
commit to numbers of arrivals or propose a cap. It might be
difficult for councils to predict potential arrival numbers
across both asylum and resettlement and therefore their capacity
to support new arrivals and the additional housing needed. Their
local communities may also have differing views on and capacity
to support new resettlement routes.
“It comes as combined pressures from current asylum and
resettlement schemes are already growing on
councils. We want to work with government on a new
joined-up approach across programmes that takes into account
those pressures, grounded in advance notice to councils of any
decisions that will impact on their local communities.
“This needs to recognise cumulative pressures on local services,
ensure councils are adequately funded and effectively engaged
with, and include urgent solutions to
pressing housing needs in the short and the long term across all
the schemes that welcome new arrivals to the UK.”
