A shortage of school places is putting at risk a UK pledge to help the most vulnerable refugees from the Syrian conflict, the National Audit Office has warned.
Nottingham City and Nottinghamshire County Councils have had to turn away cases because they were unable to provide required school places for refugee children with special educational needs, the watchdog has revealed.
It warns: “The future of the programme could be put at risk by local authorities’ lack of suitable accommodation and school places.”
The government has set a target of taking in 20,000 of the most vulnerable Syrian refugees by May 2020.
But the spending watchdog has estimated that this means 10,664 childcare and school places will need to be found.
It adds that around 20 per cent of children in the programme are expected to have special educational needs, meaning that local authorities will need to provide more than 1,500 special educational needs places.
Local authorities told the NAO that securing school places was one of the “main challenges” to participating in the programme.
‘Full or over capacity’
“Our study of capital funding for new school places found that 20.4 per cent of primary schools were full or over capacity,” said the NAO report The Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Programme.
“We also heard from Bradford Council and Nottingham City and County Councils of difficulties with finding services in the same areas: schools with available places were not in the same area as suitable accommodation.”
The government has met its interim target of resettling 1,000 refugees by Christmas 2015 - and the programme team has secured indicative pledges to resettle 20,000 refugees. But the NAO has said that to meet the target the programme team has to ensure that there is enough money for local authorities.
Amyas Morse, head of the NAO, said today that the government’s programme team must adapt budgets as the work continues “so that no organisation taking part in the programme struggles to participate effectively due to cost pressures.”
A government spokesperson said: “We remain on track to meet our commitment to resettle 20,000 refugees by the end of the Parliament.
“We ask local authorities to consider carefully whether they have the necessary infrastructure and support networks before a resettlement occurs and we will only resettle individuals to a particular area once we’ve ensured these arrangements, including school places and housing, are in place.”
£1.7 billion
The NAO found that there is no estimate of the total cost of the programme to the UK, and it estimates that it could cost up to £1.7 billion over its lifetime.
The Local Government Association, which represents councils, said that the report confirms that there are sufficient pledges to resettle families seeking refuge.
Councillor David Simmonds, chairman of the Local Government Association’s Asylum, Refugee and Migration Task Group, said: “Councils have an excellent track record in welcoming asylum seeking and refugee children and their families for many years, and continue to work hard to support the Syrian resettlement scheme alongside all the other schemes in current operation”.
The programme is only open to Syrian refugees registered in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt and Turkey. It prioritises people requiring urgent medical treatment, survivors of violence and torture, and women and children at risk.
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