Ukraine: Home for refugees scheme opens as government accused of failing to support Britons offering help

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

The government's Homes for Ukraine refugee scheme officially opened on Friday, but ministers are coming under fire for offering little practical help to Britons participating in the programme.

A website to facilitate the scheme went live earlier this week and so far more than 138,000 people across the UK registered their interest in housing people fleeing the conflict.

The scheme, announced by Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, allows individuals, charities, community groups and businesses to bring people escaping the war to safety – even if they have no ties to the UK.

Anyone with a room or home available for at least six months can offer it to a Ukrainian individual or a family, though those offering to host will be vetted and Ukrainian applicants will undergo security checks.

Ukrainians arriving in Britain will be allowed to live and work in the UK for three years and have access to healthcare, employment support, education and benefits.

But people who registered to help say they are not getting help from the government.

"It's not been the easiest to try and help, I don't feel the government has done very much to support people," Jade Connor, told Sky News.

"But in the absence of official help, people have come together across the UK amazingly," she added.

"The Facebook groups especially, that I'm a part of, the moderators on those, the administrators are working pretty much 24/7, and they're just volunteers trying to match people from Ukraine."

Charities, meanwhile, have accused the government of "unleashing chaos” through the scheme, warning refugees could die before they are matched with a sponsor and can safely reach the UK.

The scheme is a “smokescreen” and distraction from what really needs to happen, which is removing the visa requirement for Ukrainians like other European countries have done, said Robina Qureshi, director of Positive Action in Housing.

Ms Qureshi said the government had put NGOs in an “invidious” position and foisted the scheme on them without prior consultation.

She only expects a “trickle” of refugees to arrive through the scheme because they will have to find people to become sponsors while abroad before they can apply, and then make their own way to the UK.

She said it could take “months and months of processing” to safely match people to appropriate homes.

She said: “The people that need to come here, their life depends on being able to get into this country using the current route, and that’s what’s worrying us more than more than anything.

“Are some of the people going to be alive by the time the process has been gone through?

“They should be letting people in now, but the government is doing to refugees what they’ve done to the Syrians and to Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust, and what they’re doing is to reduce to an absolute minimum the number of refugees making their way to the UK in the midst of the worst refugee crisis since World War Two.”