4 months ago, a woman at Urban House Initial Accommodation Centre in Wakefield asked “How do we wash our hands with no soap in the bathrooms?” Another feared “coronavirus spreading in this crowded place”. We…

The Black Lives Matter movement has highlighted what we’ve known for years: racism is embedded in every aspect of our society and its history. It isn’t limited to the hostile environment policy or violent racist…

Asylum residents at Urban House need your support. Urban House is an Initial Accommodation Centre in Wakefield. Like other asylum accommodation in our region it is run by Mears Group as part of a £1.15 billion contract. Before…

Along with asylum tenants, SYMAAG has long documented conditions in asylum housing in Yorkshire and the north east. We assumed that when Mears took over the asylum housing contract in our region from G4S in…

Asylum residents in Urban House Initial Accommodation Centre in Wakefield are living in overcrowded conditions which endanger their lives. For the past two months as Covid-19 has become a pandemic, people in Urban House hostel…

We demand Mears provide free WiFi in all of their housing urgently, so that residents can contact support workers, lawyers, family in other countries, access medical information, education and entertainment. Sign the petition here The Mears…

The appalling, overcrowded, unhygienic housing offered to some asylum seekers and their young children is putting them at especial risk of Covid-19. A refusal of insanitary accommodation leads to threats of homelessness. John Grayson of…

Written by John Grayson ‘We could take this place, which is like a prison, for three or four weeks but not for months and months’ – Barry, a businessman from the Middle East I was…

Complaints about conditions in Urban House Initial Accommodation in Wakefield have been mounting over the past weeks and months. Dirty toilets and washrooms, overcrowding, very poor food and above all the long wait to be…

Our friend Simba needs your help. He is gravely ill and in no physical state to leave the house, but tomorrow the Home Office have demanded he attends Vulcan House, the Sheffield Home Office building,…