Asylum & refugee advice

Advice and reception for newly arrived asylum seekers will be cut by over 60%, in March 2011.

The advice covers the asylum application process, access to support and housing. It also helps people facing problems such as racial harassment, domestic violence and destitution.

Advice for recent refugees will no longer be funded at all, from September 2011.

The advice helps them access English classes, find employment and get the support they need. Mentoring by volunteers from refugees' home countries help them to settle into UK society.

Such deep cuts to refugee and asylum advice, made so quickly, will leave the most vulnerable without any help.

It will create additional costs elsewhere, leaving asylum seekers without specialist advice and relying on other services; and recent refugees on benefits and in social housing for longer.

Breaking down the voluntary sector in this way – particularly by ending services which involve community mentors - undermines the government’s vision of a Big Society.