There have been various meetings around the UK between voluntary organisations, refugee support groups, the National Asylum Support Service (NASS), Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND), Local Government Associations (LGA's) and others, to discuss the implementation of sections 55 & 57 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act, which comes into force on January 8th 2003.

The picture that is emerging from these meetings is that there is going to be complete chaos. Guidelines as to how the criteria for acceptance for NASS support will be determined have yet to be released.

NASS at Croydon will have only 10 staff to deal with all applications for NASS support. On present trends of asylum applications (30,000 in the last quarter), each member will have to deal with 1,000 applications a month. It was pointed out to NASS and IND, that staff would not be able to cope. They agreed, and when asked if they would employ more staff immediately, they said, "No, it has to break before we can mend it."

The consensus by all the bodies listed above, is that there will be a high number of refusals especially for single people, which will leave them with no fixed abode. When IND was asked where they would send correspondence for people's asylum appeals, they said, "We can't answer that".     

Plus, all in-country appeals will be heard either at Liverpool or Croydon. When IND were asked how people are going to travel, as once they are outside NASS support there is no funding for these journeys, they gave the same answer as last para.    

LGA's have expressed concern, that those made destitute would not be able to receive help in any form from the LGA's, as it would be illegal to do so.