Agenda item - City of Sanctuary Update

27.1 Emma Mcdermott presented the report to the committee.

27.2 Dr Jo Wilding, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Sussex, presented to the committee. Dr wilding spoke about the report titled ‘what it means to be a city of sanctuary’ which covers housing, education, health and access to legal advice. She said they had looked at best practice from other cities and used this to inform what could work in Brighton & Hove. They wanted to look at what would work without alienating other people or community cohesion. Dr Wilding said that of the 120 enquiries made to Brighton Housing Trust immigration legal service only 17 were taken on. She said that every region had a deficit in legal aid with 57% of those seeking asylum not able to get legal aid. She said that there had recently been a consultation announced on increasing legal aid funding. Dr wilding said that there were also non-asylum cases, such as people with no recourse to public funds, and she believed that these cases would increase over time. She said that in the hostile environment immigration cases covered everything including not being able moving into housing, being unable to leave hospital with a care plan, or being unable to leave abusive relationships. Dr wilding said that despite constraints on local authority finances there were lots of opportunities including things like using former school sites for modular housing. Elsewhere people are using the rent a room scheme, drawing on the lessons from the Homes For Ukraine scheme. Dr wilding said that there was a lot of good work on healthcare, particularly maternity in the hotels. She said that this sort of work is helping in areas like healthcare for the homeless community. Dr Wildings believed that everyone coming to the city should be looked at as a future citizen of the city with a contribution to make to Brighton & Hove.

27.3 Cllr Cattell asked a question about the number and makeup of the Afghan community and how they were being supported. Lucy Bryson replied that there were 37 households through the governments Afghan resettlement scheme, and that there were large families some with eight or nine children, some were single people, some were students who had been at the University of Sussex. Lucy said that this was only one part of the Afghan diaspora in the city. She said that support for women in the resettlement scheme included work with Voices in Exile and with the Network of International Women.

27.4 Jo Martindale said that it was a good example of the council working with CVS an wanted to see mor of this. Emma Mcdermott responded that they wanted to hold on to what they had learned from the multi-agency, agile working during the Home for Ukraine work.

27.5 Cllr Shanks asked about the ongoing funding for the work. Emma Mcdermott replied that the refugee and migrant team were fully funded by government grants and so did not require council revenue funding. The City of Sanctuary work was within council funding and staff.

27.6 Cllr Pickett asked how many City of Sanctuaries there were and how well Brighton & Hove compared. Lucy Bryson replied that there were lots of Cities of Sanctuaries as well as boroughs, towns, and villages of sanctuary across the country. She said that she represented Brighton & Hove on the national network for cities of sanctuary so was able to meet with others from across the country regularly. Lucy said that Brighton & Hove was doing really well but had haven’t told the story yet, and that hopefully once the application had gone in this could start to happen.

27.7 Cllr Pickett asked a question about housing being an issue because of the lack of supply in the city. Lucy Bryson responded that the whole of the south had far fewer asylum seekers because of the cost of housing. Dr Jo Wilding said that dispersal of asylum seekers had started in 2000 to move people out of the southeast to places where housing was cheaper. She noted that every locally authority in the country, with the exception of the Isles of Scilly, had asylum accommodation.

27.8 Adam Muirhead reiterated points about the learning taken from the work done and asked if the report was captured this work as a case study. Emma Mcdermott said that Homes for Ukraine had been their first time working at pace and on scale and they wanted to know if they could continue this. The team had found that with trusted relationships things could get done with bureaucracy. Dr Jo Wilding said that inter migrant analysis had carried out work to look at what has changed since 2017. A lot had been done to learn best practice from elsewhere, as well as having academic knowledge and feeding it into the council. Lucy Bryson said that she had been on fully funded learning visits to other areas including Birmingham, Coventry, Cardiff, and Northern Ireland to see what they were doing. She had also been working closely with her counterpart in Liverpool to see what they had done to be accredited.

27.9 Cllr O’Quinn was pleased to see work being done with Hong Kongers and asked how much goes on with them. Lucy Bryson said that there were around 900 Hong Kong British National Overseas passport holders in Brighton & Hove and that there was a small funding stream from MHCLG which was used for a range of things. She said that this year funding would be going into a local diaspora group. Lucy also said that the council has less connections with the pre-existing Chinese community and that there is mistrust and tensions between the two communities.

27.9 RESOLVED That Committee notes the council and its partners’ work related to refugees and asylum seekers and developments in central government policy and practice over this period. That Committee notes the steps being undertaken by the city council to secure accreditation as a Local Authority of Sanctuary in 2025 in accordance with the Council Plan.