News from the Residential Property Investor, the bi-monthly magazine for RLA members other artilces from the August / September 2001 issue RPI news archive

Dispersal policy driven by 'cheap accommodation' - August / September 2001

Government ministers have failed to place asylum seekers in the 'cluster areas' able to support them, according to a report by the Royal Institute for International Affairs.

When the Government's dispersal programme was announced during the last parliament, it came with a pledge to house asylum seekers in areas where there was already a resident ethnic minority population.

However, according to Christina Boswell, the report's author, the policy of farming-out asylum seekers has been driven by 'availability of cheap accommodation' ­ a strategy that has led to those housed being placed into inappropriate properties in areas of 'high social tension'.

Responding to the report's findings, former Home Office minister Mike O'Brien said: 'I don't deny that there have been problems, particularly with some of the private suppliers, some of whom have not been very good at all'.

But O'Brien, who had previously overseen the dispersal policy conformed: 'The objective is still to have cluster areas where asylum seekers can be provided with various support'.
 

other artilces from the August / September 2001 issue

• Getting off benefits
• Byers 'entices' investors with HB conditions
• Dispersal policy driven by 'cheap accommodation'
• Void calculation held to be void
• Stormy times for policy holders
• Security bye-law considered
• Independent insurance advice
• Mixed messages on house prices
• In brief