SYMAAG invites you to an action day conference on human rights and asylum housing in Sheffield on Saturday 24th February, 11am – 4pm at The Sanctuary, 37-39 Chapel Walk, Sheffield S1 2PD.

Tenders are already in from the corporations and companies set to exploit the latest (and biggest) contract to be offered in the UK and European asylum markets, housing refugees waiting for the outcomes of asylum claims. G4S has already confirmed its interest.

Asylum housing throughout the UK was outsourced in 2012 by the Home Office with a five year £1.7bn contract given to three international security companies G4S, Serco and the smaller Reliance company. The contracts have been problematic for most asylum tenants (with four critical parliamentary inquiries), and disastrous for many individuals and families.

The 1999 Asylum and Immigration Act stripped asylum tenants of all the rights established in law for council and private tenants. Since 2012 there have been many examples where the legal and human rights of refugee children and disabled refugees have been threatened by conditions in, and management, of asylum accommodation.

Two of the present contractors Serco and G4S have been criticised and sanctioned for their record on human rights in managing contracts in detention centres, and children’s prisons in the UK, and in prisons and detention centres in South Africa, Palestine, and Australia.

Is this record relevant to the award of new contracts for the care of refugees with £4 billion of taxpayers money? With the collapse of Carillion and Capita on the edge, can huge private companies ever be relied on to provide public services?

Come along on 24 February, have your say and decide what actions we can take.

The event will be held at The Sanctuary, Chapel Walk, Sheffield city centre (opposite Crucible Theatre) S1 2PD.

Speakers will include asylum tenants, journalists, housing researchers and academics, and YOU in small group discussions producing plans for action.

This event is free but please let SYMAAG know if intend to come as places are limited, by contacting dignitynotdetention@yahoo.co.uk or texting John Grayson mob 07887 481355

BRIEFING: From COMPASS to the £4 billion AASC asylum housing contract

On 18 November the new AASC (Asylum Accommodation and Support Services Contracts) for asylum housing across the UK from September 2019 to September 2029 were opened for tender.The cost to the British tax payer is a staggering £4 billion. Bidders for the contracts were given TWENTY NINE DAYS to the 17 December to register an interest.There were seven contract areas offered (Northern Ireland is the smallest at £50 million, the North West and the South of England the largest with £900 million all over ten years) making it likely that bidders would be limited to corporations and large housing companies operating in asylum markets across the EU: like the present holders of the UK COMPASS contracts:G4S, Serco, and Clearsprings.

There is already confirmation that G4S has put in their tender

There are other indications that the three holders of the contracts, or private contractors like them, may well be the government’s preferred companies for delivery of the new contracts. On the 9 November, nine months on from a highly critical report on the COMPASS contracts by the Home Affairs Select Committee published on 31 January 2017, the government finally gave its response to their findings and recommendations. The government rejected the findings and recommendations wholesale and claimed that the “the standard of accommodation provided to asylum seekers has improved since 2012.”

Since the present contractors came on board in June 2012, there have been four significant inquiries, featuring asylum housing in Parliament, the Children’s’ Society Parliamentary panel in 2013, a Home Affairs Committee inquiry in 2013, a Public Accounts Committee inquiry in 2014 and the current Home Affairs Committee inquiry.

In 2016 G4S was fined £5.6m for the standard of the housing it provided in 2013/14. Despite all that, regardless of persistently negative media coverage and asylum tenants’ tenacious resistance and solidarity campaigning, still, G4S, Serco and Clearel hold the contract. They were given an extension (and more money) in December 2016 which will take them through to September 2019.

Five years of John Grayson’s  research and monitoring of the COMPASS contracts alongside asylum tenants can be found at

https://www.opendemocracy.net/author/john-grayson and at the Institute for Race Relations News Service www.irr.org.uk