Steve James
Transnational service company Serco has restarted efforts to evict asylum seekers from their accommodation in the city of Glasgow, Scotland.
In late July, the Scottish Refugee Council reported that three men who had temporarily left their flats returned home to find that Serco staff had changed the locks. The men are now homeless, destitute and entirely dependent on friends and charity. The evictions are the first of 300 the services giant intends to push through in the weeks ahead.
As of mid-August, up to 60 evictions have been halted by “interim interdicts,” temporary court orders, granted to the asylum seekers pending a legal clarification of their position. Over the last week, a further 20 asylum seekers reported to the Scottish Refugee Council that Serco had started issuing 14-day eviction warning letters, reducing from 21 days the time people have to respond to the eviction threat.
Some tactics deployed by Serco are particularly vile. Anna Pearce of the Asylum Seeker Housing project told the Scotsman, “Once government support has stopped, the asylum seekers will be given low-value vouchers for the [electricity] meters so they have to keep returning to Serco’s offices to pick up more … Sometimes, the property is so cold they go to stay at friends for a few nights. Then Serco says the property has been abandoned and changes the locks.”
Mourad Khelfane, a 29-year-old engineer from Algeria, has had no state support for the past seven months. He is dependent on food banks and handouts. Serco staff come and go from his Shettleston flat as they please. He has no family in Glasgow and is in imminent danger of being thrown onto the streets.
He told the Scotsman, “I cannot stop worrying, I cannot sleep. I left Algeria when I was 24. Now I am nearly 29. I keep thinking it will be too late for me to live my life.”
The threat to asylum seekers has again generated wide public revulsion and opposition, including protests and preparations to physically defend asylum seekers’ homes. Thousands of people have signed up to tenants’ union Living Rent’s list of those prepared to mobilise in front of homes threatened with eviction. Protests have also been organised on Serco’s Caledonian Sleeper rail service.
Serco, along with rivals G4S and Clearsprings, have since 2012 been contracted by the British Home Office to provide the cheapest possible accommodation to people seeking asylum in the UK while their claims are processed. The operators rent housing from local authorities, housing associations and private landlords, integrating, as Serco boast, “hundreds of landlords into one property portfolio, reducing costs and administration to the Government.”
The company recently won new housing contracts in England despite having been fined £6.8 million since 2012 for the miserable quality of the housing it provided. Its Scottish contract is due to be taken over by another services giant, Mears Group, later this year.
One year ago, Serco first announced its intention to evict the 300 or so asylum seekers whose asylum claims, according to Serco and the government, had failed and for which the company was no longer being paid by the Home Office.
In fact, many of the individuals still had legal options available—appeals, new claims. Some had been accepted as having the right to remain in the UK but had not been able to find new accommodation. Others were destitute, having been denied asylum and facing deportation at some indefinite point, back to countries from which they fled and where their lives may in be immediate danger.
Under public pressure, Serco agreed to “pause all further lock-change notices … whilst the law is being tested and clarified.”
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