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Free coach tickets home for eastern Europeans on streets
Pilot scheme spends £100,000 of taxpayers’ cash returning homeless migrants
HUNDREDS of eastern European migrants sleeping rough in the West End are being repatriated with taxpayers’ money.
In the past year Westminster Council has spent £100,000 on sending people who have no access to benefits back to their homelands by coach as part of a government pilot scheme aimed at ending homelessness by 2012.
Since 2005 the council has received grants from the Communities Department to give around 600 people a one-way £50 coach ticket home – a rate of 20 a month.
It is estimated there are more than 2,500 homeless eastern and central European people sleeping on the streets – many of whom struggled to find work during the migration wave that followed the expansion of the European Union in 2004 and 2007.
Homeless charities say the recent economic downturn has worsened their plight, with many forced onto the street without access to benefits and hostel places.
Language difficulties and a lack of assistance from embassies and consulates have also contributed to the large numbers of mainly Polish people sleeping rough.
The service is administered by the Met Police homeless unit on behalf of the council.
Councillor Philippa Roe, the council’s cabinet member for housing, said: “Of the thousands of people from eastern Europe that come to the UK every year, the majority find jobs and accommodation.
“However, a small minority that arrive here with little money and no contacts can end up sleeping rough.
“At present, we can’t help them into accommodation because of government legislation, which means they are not allowed to claim housing benefits or access our hostels unless they have worked for a year. But we do have a duty to assist vulnerable people and this scheme has allowed us to help those who have said they would like to return home.
“We are lobbying the embassies to provide more support for their own nationals while they are in the UK and when they return home.”
The London-wide charity Thames Reach has also received money to roll out the scheme, and will be using planes as well as coaches. A spokesman for the charity told the West End Extra there would be no “compulsion”, and the scheme would only be offered to those people who wanted to return home.
“We’re not giving them a ticket and telling them to go home,” the spokesman added. “Most of these people can access benefits back home, but either don’t know that or are too proud.
“Eastern european migrants have enormously strengthened the economy, but a few have fallen on hard times.
“We are by no means dictating to them. There is a choice and we will help however we can because these people are living in desperate conditions.”
The charity also plans to fly in Polish outreach workers to meet its homeless clients to ensure they have access to welfare services when they return home.
Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “In the interests of British people and the wellbeing of migrants themselves, the government should look at requiring proof that people are able to support themselves if they are coming here without a job offer.” |
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