News - Positive Action in Housing

19 June 2021

Asylum housing contractor condemned for inhumane Housing conditions

The Mears Group has accommodated a victim of slavery and modern trafficking, and sufferer if severe PTSD, in dangerous and delapidated accommodation in Newcastle. See photographs from today. M, a nominee for an Amnesty Bravery Award, and a well known Volunteer in Newcastle, has bravely decided to speak out because…

10 June 2021

Call to Action – the Aspen Card Crisis

Add your name in support Over 80* refugee and migrant organisations, lawyers and academics across Scotland, Wales and England have signed an open letter to the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, to raise questions about the ongoing Aspen Card Crisis and the card contractor PrePaid Financial Services. Almost three weeks after…

9 June 2021

Asylum madness

Reprinted from the Private Eye – June 9 2021 As hundreds of desperate asylum seekers are still struggling to feed themselves and their families over two weeks after the failed introduction of new pre-paid cash cards, Priti Patel faces tricky questions over the choice of the new private contractor responsible for the…

7 June 2021

Aspen card crisis continues – but still no apology from Patel

Thousands of asylum seekers, including families with babies and children, are still being left without money for food, almost two weeks after the failed introduction of new pre-paid cash cards by the Home Office’s contractor PrePaid Financial Services, after it took over from Sodexo. Verity, a mother of…

2 June 2021

Having problems with your Aspen Card ? Take action now.

For U.K. Asylum Seekers. Positive Action in Housing has prepared this *digital self help tool* to help asylum seekers, lawyers dealing with aspen card issues The Aspen Card Scandal is affecting around 19K-20K asylum seekers in the U.K. and around 1500 in Glasgow. The Home Office has issued 6,000…

1 June 2021

The Aspen Card Crisis and the Home Office’s bureaucratic slow violence against refugees

The Home Office has privately admitted that thousands of asylum seekers continue to be left without working payment cards for more than ten days after their financial support was cut off during a Home Office contract changeover. Published courtesy of asylumseekerx (Twitter) One third of all asylum seekers on…

28 May 2021

The Aspen Card Crisis

Thousands of asylum seeking families are believed to have been left without any money for food or essential purchases for over a week because of a shambolic changeover of debit cards. Complaints have flooded in to Positive Action in Housing – and NGOs across the U.K. – since May 24,…

25 May 2021

More impoverishment for Glasgow Asylum Seekers as Aspen card switch leaves families Without Food or Money

Positive Action in Housing, a refugee and migrants homelessness charity, is receiving a high volume of reports of impoverishment from asylum seekers in Glasgow and elsewhere across the U.K. Complaints have flooded in since Monday when the Home Office ended its Aspen Card contract with Sodexo and switched to…

22 May 2021

Too Long to be Illegal: Implications of India’s Consent on ‘Migration and Mobility’

Britain has suggested that there are at least 75,000 illegal migrants from India that it wants to send back. New Delhi believes the number is about 2,000. Reprinted from News 18 The arrest of two allegedly overstaying Indians near Glasgow, and their release after the van in which they were being taken away…

16 May 2021

The lessons to be learned from Glasgow’s Home Office stand-off

By Mike Small Reprinted from The National THE inspirational peaceful protest of Kenmure Street shows not just a model for resisting the racist British Home Office, but a template for self-determination. For a Scotland stuck in perpetual limbo between the democracy it aspires to be and the Scotland stuck…