A government contractor that sparked controversy by threatening to evict asylum seekers in Glasgow and change the locks on their doors has lost its asylum housing contract in Scotland.
The UK Home Office announced yesterday that the Mears Group, a social care and housing contractor, will replace Serco from September.
The news comes after a protracted row between Glasgow City Council and Serco over the company’s plan to evict around 300 asylum seekers who were refused refugee status, announced in the summer of 2018.
The programme was halted after hunger strikes, public protests and a legal challenge to the evictions.
Serco will instead take on a £1.9 billion contract providing housing for 2,000 asylum seekers in the North West of England, the Midlands and the East of England.
Today, Glasgow City Council criticised the government’s policy of contracting housing for those seeking refugee protection to private firms but welcomed the new contract as an “opportunity” to help Glasgow’s asylum seekers.
Councillor Jennifer Layden, the council’s Convener for Equalities and Human Rights, said: “It remains our position that by far the best outcome for both asylum seekers and receiving communities across Glasgow would be for the city council to be fully funded to provide a holistic, welfare-based asylum service, inclusive of accommodation.
Ms Layden said the government remained “ideologically wedded” to private housing contracts for asylum seekers.
”The Home Office must now commit to ensuring that Mears performs significantly better than their predecessors in providing support to vulnerable people, and, crucially, how they approach partnership working with the council,” she said.
The row reached the Home Office in July, when seven MPs signed an open letter to Sajid Javid, the Home Secretary, urging him to stop the evictions.
David Linden, MP for Glasgow East, told The Herald: "Whilst this change of contract falls far short of an overdue overhaul of the asylum accommodation system in the UK, it hopefully provides an opportunity to improve the way some of the most vulnerable people in our society are treated.
"On a regular basis I see the calamitous consequences of the privatisation of asylum accommodation contracts by the UK government, with some people forced to live in dire and substandard housing and others threatened with forced eviction and homelessness.”
Mr Linden said he will meet senior representatives of Mears “at the earliest opportunity”.
Julia Rogers, Managing Director of Serco’s immigration business, said: “We are obviously disappointed not to have won the competition in Scotland.
“Despite what some commentators have said, I know that our team in Glasgow has delivered a service that has seen the asylum seekers in our care treated with dignity and respect and provided with accommodation that not only meets all the required standards, but is some of the most heavily inspected in the country.
“Our employees who are residents and constituents of Glasgow, have always been totally professional in circumstances that were at times very challenging and I am proud of them all.
“Our job now is to complete the contract to the highest standard over the next nine months and hand over to the new provider in September.”
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