Admin

By Admin13th July 20200General

Mears Group, Urban House and Covid 19

4 months ago, a woman at Urban House Initial Accommodation Centre in Wakefield asked “How do we wash our hands with no soap in the bathrooms?” Another feared “coronavirus spreading in this crowded place”. We…

By Admin16th June 20200General

Charity So White

The Black Lives Matter movement has highlighted what we’ve known for years: racism is embedded in every aspect of our society and its history. It isn’t limited to the hostile environment policy or violent racist…

By Admin16th June 20200General

Support Urban House residents

Asylum residents at Urban House need your support. Urban House is an Initial Accommodation Centre in Wakefield. Like other asylum accommodation in our region it is run by Mears Group as part of a £1.15 billion contract. Before…

By Admin15th April 20200Asylum Housing, Campaigns, Mears

How Mears are putting asylum tenants in danger

Along with asylum tenants, SYMAAG has long documented conditions in asylum housing in Yorkshire and the north east. We assumed that when Mears took over the asylum housing contract in our region from G4S in…

By Admin10th April 20200Asylum Housing, Campaigns, Mears

Protect asylum residents – Close Urban House in Wakefield.

Asylum residents in Urban House Initial Accommodation Centre in Wakefield are living in overcrowded conditions which endanger their lives. For the past two months as Covid-19 has become a pandemic, people in Urban House hostel…

By Admin31st March 20200Asylum Housing

Don’t Cut Us Off. Mears: Install WiFi Internet in all Asylum Housing! Sign the petition

We demand Mears provide free WiFi in all of their housing urgently, so that residents can contact support workers, lawyers, family in other countries, access medical information, education and entertainment. Sign the petition here The Mears…

By Admin31st March 20200Asylum Housing

‘How do we wash our hands with no soap in the bathrooms?’

The appalling, overcrowded, unhygienic housing offered to some asylum seekers and their young children is putting them at especial risk of Covid-19. A refusal of insanitary accommodation leads to threats of homelessness. John Grayson of…

By Admin18th February 20200Asylum Housing

Like a prison: discussions with people inside Urban House Initial Accommodation Centre, Wakefield

Written by John Grayson ‘We could take this place, which is like a prison, for three or four weeks but not for months and months’ – Barry, a businessman from the Middle East I was…

By Admin7th February 20200Asylum Housing

Is this what we paid £1.15 billion for? Concerns grow over conditions at Urban House

Complaints about conditions in Urban House Initial Accommodation in Wakefield have been mounting over the past weeks and months. Dirty toilets and washrooms, overcrowding, very poor food and above all the long wait to be…

By Admin26th January 20200Asylum, Detention, Sheffield

Justice for Simba: emergency protest 10am January 27th Vulcan House Sheffield

Our friend Simba needs your help. He is gravely ill and in no physical state to leave the house, but tomorrow the Home Office have demanded he attends Vulcan House, the Sheffield Home Office building,…

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