Bibby Stockholm: Asylum seekers face withdrawal of presidency help if they do not board barge

Asylum seekers who didn’t get on the Bibby Stockholm right this moment have till Tuesday to board the vessel or face having their authorities help cancelled, Sky News can reveal.

While 15 folks did board the barge docked in Portland, Devon, round 20 folks didn’t take up the supply made on what the federal government has referred to as a “no-choice basis”.

Sky News has seen a letter despatched by the Home Office to a kind of individuals who stayed on dry land.

Politics newest: Could migrants be sent to isolated volcanic island?

It states: “Arrangements have been made so that you can journey out of your lodging… to various lodging on the Bibby Stockholm in Portland on 7 August 2023.

“On 7 August you did not take up the offer of this accommodation.

“Please think about this letter a second notification to alter your lodging with preparations in place to maneuver you to the Bibby Stockholm, Portland on 8 August 2023.

“Accommodation is offered on a no-choice basis. Where asylum seekers fail to take up an offer of suitable accommodation without a reasonable explanation, there should be no expectation that alternative accommodation will be offered.

“If you don’t journey tomorrow, on 8 August 2023, preparations for ceasing the help that you’re receiving from the Home Office might start.”

It isn’t clear whether or not this implies the particular person in query could be left homeless.

Read extra:
Government must triple activity to meet asylum backlog target
First 15 asylum seekers moved onto Bibby Stockholm barge
Jeremy Corbyn hits out at Labour position on migrant barges

Earlier, Cheryl Avery, the director of asylum lodging on the Home Office, stated: “So we successfully onboarded the first cohort today and there are 15 people on board.

“We have had a couple of challenges, however that is a part of an ongoing structured course of to carry a cohort of as much as 500 folks on board.

“There have been some challenges, some minor legal challenges, and I can’t go to the detail of those, but accommodation is offered to all individuals on a no-choice basis – so we are looking at how we manage that going forward.”

The Care4Calais group says about 20 asylum seekers didn’t board the barge as a result of their transfers have been “cancelled” as a consequence of authorized challenges.

The charity claimed solicitors raised considerations concerning the suitability of the lodging for folks with disabilities, psychological and bodily well being issues, in addition to those that had fled torture and persecution.

Care4Calais chief government Steve Smith stated: “None of the asylum seekers we are supporting have gone to the Bibby Stockholm today as legal representatives have had their transfers cancelled.

“Amongst our purchasers are people who find themselves disabled, who’ve survived torture and fashionable slavery and who’ve had traumatic experiences at sea. To home any human being in a ‘quasi floating jail’ just like the Bibby Stockholm is inhumane. To attempt to achieve this with this group of individuals is unbelievably merciless. Even simply receiving the notices is inflicting them a substantial amount of nervousness.”

Steve Valdez-Symonds, Amnesty International UK’s refugee and migrant rights director, said: “It appears there’s nothing this authorities will not do to make folks searching for asylum really feel unwelcome and unsafe on this nation.

Click to subscribe to the Sky News Daily wherever you get your podcasts

“Reminiscent of the prison hulks from the Victorian era, the Bibby Stockholm is an utterly shameful way to house people who’ve fled terror, conflict and persecution.”

Sky News has approached the Home Office for remark.