Refugees

(asked on 2nd September 2022) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many community sponsorship applications have been (a) submitted and (b) approved in the last 12 months; and how many applications were pending as 1 September 2022.


Answered by
Tom Pursglove Portrait
Tom Pursglove
Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
This question was answered on 20th September 2022

Community Sponsorship enables local volunteer groups including charities and faith groups, to directly welcome and support refugees, helping with accommodation and integration support.

Between the 1 September 2021 and 31 August 2022, 67 applications were submitted by groups wishing to sponsor refugees, and 62 applications have been approved during that period of time. To note, those approved may not necessarily be the same as those submitted during the year reported.

More than 790 refugees have been resettled through Community Sponsorship since the scheme began in 2016. Details of the number of refugees resettled through community sponsorship each quarter are published in the quarterly immigration statistics. The latest release is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/asylum-and-resettlement-datasets.

Through the New Plan for Immigration, the Government has committed to increase the number of resettled refugees supported through Community Sponsorship, encouraging stronger partnerships between local government and community groups.

The Government funds Reset, a capacity building organisation to increase the number and diversity of Community Sponsorship groups and catalyse the growth of the scheme. This includes campaign work targeting the recruitment of new sponsor groups, and a toolkit which supports others to help raise awareness of Community Sponsorship.

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