Voluntary Groups to Seek Asylum

Everybody has been jumping up and down over the last couple of weeks about the fact that the courts have forced London Councils (an organisation made up of all the London boroughs, that part from other work also fund a large number of community and voluntary organisations in London) to reconsider where they wield the axe.


The axe had fallen predominately on organisation’s providing front line services to ethnic and refugee communities. The case before the High Court relied on the claim by the Roma Support group (a truly unique organisation) that London Councils had not undertaken a proper equality impact assessment. And indeed the consultation process whilst extensive in reach, did not actually ask the right questions (more on that in future weeks where we’ll talk about the Art of Consultation), it categorised services into 3 categories services n A were London wide, Services in B could be sub regional and services in C were purely locally, (the responsibility of local councils).


No there are a number of issues with the categorisation as well as the fact that if the money that is put into the centre by the individual boroughs is as London Councils call it ‘repatriated’ (we’ll come back on the use of the word shortly) then there is no guarantee that it will be used to add additional value to the local community and voluntary sector.

However one of the issues that no one has dared to explore or highlight yet is the ‘old school boy network’ that is at play here. The services in category A are all the larger projects, allegedly pan London services and also designed to support organisations in categories B & C.
Are you thinking what I’m thinking, if there are no agencies left in B & C who are the As going to support? So why have some organisations that are well passed their use by date been allowed to survive. The real impact assessment that needs to be done is not just on how clients are affected, but the circles of influence, persuasion that has allowed a clique of decision and opinion makers to decide. Elected members aren't armed with enough information to ask the right question, why throw the baby out with the bathwater, why hasn't more been done to make the reporting system more appropiate.

There is also the incidental issue that one of the reasons why the new configuration of London Councils funding was arranged the way it was because some London boroughs especially the outer London boroughs were fed up of paying into a pot that did not directly benefit their residents, since most of the organisations were based in central London. Call us naïve but surely we could have had more robust monitoring to support that, not forgeting
client confidentiality -  why couldn’t postcodes have been provided, random checks done and groups asked to bring forward groups of residents that had benefited from their service.
No that would be far too easy a get out; instead we had/have overly bureaucratic reporting mechanisms, epitoimised in the Stratgeic Monitoring Zones (no we haven’t been transported to Afghanistan).

RAMFEL is firmly of the opinion that all services for disadvantaged, minority groups, be they for LGBT, disabled people, or people on low incomes should be spared. However the public opinion against asylum, immigration and migration could make community and voluntary groups that work with new arrivals easy targets. And let’s face it they have already started with huge cuts to the Refugee Council’s direct front line services, another way of frustrating people back to their country. The first major cut that went was the Migrant Impact Fund, very few local authorities did anything, why because they were just so glad it wasn’t anything else!

The use of the word ‘repatriation’ is quite interesting. Now when people are repatriated from an immigration point of view it is usually either voluntary or forced, and based on the premise that either you don’t want to be here or the state doesn’t want you. When currency is repatriated (in a non money laundering sense) it is converted into the local version. We can be sure that in this context the funding won’t be translated or converted to meeting local needs, because so much has changed and most of the people assessing local need are doubtful about their own jobs. In some ways then the choice of repatriation is more than apt for the context of London Councils, because by default they have added fuel to the fire of inequality.

We need n additional way of looking an Equality Impact Assessments (while we still have them) that highlights the process of decision making as much as the end result.

So could we apply for asylum in another borough, not flaming likely, repatriation for many BAMER organisations means only one thing - death!