Resource

This evidence looks at HBF client's experience of engaging with the Home Office and raises the following concerns: 

• Reporting conditions can be and are imposed on extremely vulnerable individuals, including those with mental and/or physical disabilities and survivors of torture and trafficking. Challenging the frequency of reporting conditions often requires significant advocacy and the evidential threshold can be set impossibly high for many (usually a detailed medical report is needed).
• As well as being extremely distressing, the cost of attending report centres is prohibitive given the extremely low rates of asylum support (£49.18 a week or just £8.86 for those in catered accommodation such as hotels). In our experience, it can also require third party advocacy to ensure that travel tickets or expenses are provided in advance of reporting events, interviews, and appeal hearings. 
• People seeking asylum during reporting are often treated poorly by some security guards and immigration officers. This adds to the harm and trauma caused by the reporting experience.
• The summer of last year saw terrible problems regarding discontinuation of asylum support and the move-on period which left many new refugees homeless, or at serious risk of becoming so. They, in part, stemmed from problems with when refugees receive their grant letter, their Biometric Residence Permit (BRP,) the letter containing the date when their asylum support will end, and the notice to quit their accommodation on the same day. While the Home Office has done a lot of work to address some of these problems, we remain concerned about whether they have been fully addressed.
• In the context of “promptness and efficiency” of Home Office correspondence, HBF would also like to highlight the ongoing issues with responses from Migrant Help, subcontracted by the Home Office. Staff frequently see queries regarding asylum support going unanswered for weeks if not months.

Click on the arrow below to read the full submission. 

In the Summer, HBF also signed a joint letter to the Home Secretary calling for the suspension of all in-person immigration reporting and appointments, on account of the overwhelming fear of violent racist attacks in communities. The Home Office's response can be found here.