Legal News

Stroud district councillors have voted to back plans for vulnerable Syrian refugees to be resettled locally.

At a meeting last week, councillors also voted to £5,000 to Gloucestershire Action for Refugees and Asylum Seekers (GARAS) – a charity that will play a pivotal role in helping the council provide support to refugees arriving in the area.

The council will now begin the process of officially applying to the Home Office to accept between five and ten families from refugee camps on the Syrian border in the next twelve months, as part of the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Relocation Scheme (SVPR) which takes in refugees directly from camps bordering Syria.

The council will work with GARAS to deliver support and advice to the refugees, both when they first arrive and later as they settle in.

Once the refugees have arrived in Gloucestershire, it is anticipated they will be housed in the private rented sector.

The Home Office has clarified that currently there is no expectation on the public to offer rooms in their houses because families are mainly expected, rather than unaccompanied children.

The UK government is prioritising vulnerable families in migrant camps on the Syrian border, as well as orphaned children or those separated from their families. People with disabilities, the elderly and those with mental health problems will also be prioritised.

The UK will be taking 20,000 Syrian refugees up to 2020.

Stroud District Council says the best way to help refugees is to donate cash rather than goods to humanitarian organisations charities such as GARAS, the British Red Cross, Oxfam and Save the Children.

Stroud District Council leader, Councillor Geoff Wheeler, said:

“We are very encouraged by the local offers of help – and we know that our residents will make the refugees feel welcome and become part of the local community.

“As a council, we felt it was very important to help these people who have been caught up in one of the biggest humanitarian crisis we have seen in our time.”

Last weekend, Hungary closed its border with Croatia, resulting in thousands of migrants being unable to continue their journey through Hungary and onto to EU member states to claim asylum.

The government has suggested that the most effective way of tackling the refugee crisis in Europe is to invest in improving conditions in refugee camps along the Syrian border, to prevent migrants risking their lives by trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea from Turkey, Libya and the Egyptian port of Alexandria to Europe, or walking along railway lines to cross borders to EU member states.

In September, a total of 168,000 migrants crossed the Mediterranean – the highest monthly figure ever recorded and nearly five times the number who arrived in Europe via the Mediterranean Sea in September 2014.
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