By Teresa Alexander
More than 500 people have signed a petition urging Brighton and Hove City council to welcome more Syrian refugees after the city pledged to resettle five households.
Cath Senker, author and teacher at the Migrant English Project in Brighton, set up the petition on the 38degrees.org website in September, after the council appealed for landlords to come forward to help house refugee families.
Ms Senker acknowledged the city was dependent on the government and other service providers in dealing with this crisis. However, she said the authority were equipped with the expertise and experience to do so.
She said: “I petitioned to Brighton and Hove Council because they’re my local representatives and I hope by doing that the people of Brighton sign and indicate to the council they are willing to welcome more refugees because that will help the council bid for more funding from central government to bring more refugees here.
“I understand 14 landlords have already come forward and there are organisations collating offers of help and spare rooms from people locally in Brighton and Hove.
“Brighton and Hove welcomed 79 Oroma refugees back in 2006 and we did this successfully. Their case was actually a lot more complicated because of the circumstances they came from.
“In resettling more Syrian refugees we would be relying on our prior experience of having done it and having done it very successfully.
“At the recent City of Sanctuary meeting there were people from both the statutory and the voluntary sector who were all willing to help and confident we could handle more refugees.
“These were people who were involved in integrating the Oroma refugees so we have the expertise and experience in dealing with this capacity.”
Meanwhile, the first Syrian refugees are due to arrive in the city in December.
Brighton and Hove City Council was recently given a City of Sanctuary status, in recognition of its longstanding hospitality and commitment to welcoming refugees.
A spokesman for the council confirmed the authority had received offers of assistance from landlords and said they would be contacting landlords directly to discuss these offers with them.
However, he warned not all offers received would lead directly to suitable and available accommodation for Syrian households.
He said: “Many of the approaches from landlords were enquiries about how the scheme works, or offers that might come to fruition once current tenancies end in some months’ time, or they were from landlords outside Brighton and Hove.”
He added the council would be applying the lessons learned previously from the Oroma people in their planning process for the Syrian refugees, but said it was likely their needs would be different.
He said: “The 79 refugees who arrived in the UK in 2006 on the Gateway Protection Programme were mostly Oromo people, originally from Ethiopia. They arrived over a six week period.
“The council and other service providers learnt a great deal from the process of welcoming and resettling this group – and are applying the lessons learned at that time to our planning for this group.
“However, at the same time, we anticipate that the needs of the households arriving from Syria will differ in many ways from those of the 2006 Gateway group.”
In response to Ms Senker’s petition he said: “Should the petitioner wish for it to be raised at full council for debate we would invite them to contact our democratic services team to discuss the request.”
Anyone who can offer help in housing refugees should email refugeehelp@brighton-hove.gov.uk.
Thanks for posting this article to raise awareness of the campaign to welcome more refugees to our city. Great to know the council is willing to discuss the issue.
How many of the people who voted actually live in Brighton I wonder…
Only people who live in Brighton and Hove have been invited to sign the petition.