A CHARITY supporting asylum seekers in Glasgow is raising concerns about a “massive spike” in the number of housing complaints made since Mears Group has taken over the housing contract from Serco.

Multinational company Serco lost its Home Office contract in September but is still involved in the eviction of dozens of refused asylum seekers.

It was hoped improvements would follow Mears’s takeover but the Asylum Seeker Housing (ASH) Project said its figures showed its caseload of housing complaints had doubled, with 231 issues raised from September 16, 2019, when Mears took over, to January 16, compared with 111 in the previous four months.

The project has seen a particular increase in the number of people reporting broken boilers in some cases, which the Sunday National has seen documented, were not fixed for more than a month.

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They include households with young children. Over Christmas and New Year the charity raised five cases with the Home Office because it was unable to find another resolution.

Last October, a family was left without a working toilet for 21 days and had to flush it using buckets of water. The father claims he visited the Mears offices seven times in an attempt to resolve the issue, using a whole week of asylum support in travel costs.

Other complaints include having no working cooking facilities, damp and mould, and safety adaptations required by a family with an autistic child, which went unresolved for months.

It is claimed that the new terms of the contract are partly to blame, with reports now to be made through Home Office-funded Migrant Help rather than direct to the housing provider. The charity has now addressed problems with the

UK-wide phone line which had waits of several hours due to staff shortages. However, it has been suggested that some complaints may not have reached Mears.

Others have pointed to issues with the quality of housing stock, which is the cheapest on the market and has been managed by successive private housing providers for many years without investment. Mears insists it is committed to making improvements.

Andrew Minshaw, from the ASH Project, said: “Since Mears took over the Home Office asylum accommodation contract in September 2019, ASH has seen a massive spike in the number of repairs reported to us, with our caseload more than doubling compared to the same time period of Serco’s tenure.

“We have also seen a worrying increase in the length of time to do the repairs with, in some cases, families being left without essential amenities, such as no heating or hot water for weeks on end.

“ASH was particularly concerned about these cases and we contacted the Home Office who did intervene and the provider dealt with some of these essential repairs immediately.”

A spokesman for the Scottish Asylum Seeker Residents Association (SASRA) agreed that since the contract changed an increasing number of residents in Mears accommodation had contacted the organisation with complaints and problems.

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“The complaints are now being lodged [with Migrant Help] but the repairs are still not being carried out in a timely way,” he said.

“Many of them are being dealt with right at the end of the agreed timescales but others are still solved by then. It’s affecting people very badly because they are already suffering from depression and anxiety about their claims.”

Stuart McDonald SNP MP and shadow immigration minister, said: “These are very concerning reports which suggest that while there’s a new contract, the same old failings persist. It is imperative that Mears respond and explain the steps they will be taking to address these problems – and the Home Office should be holding them accountable under their contract.

“Ultimately, the Home Office made totally the wrong call by tweaking the old Compass outsourcing contracts rather than fundamentally changing the way we provide asylum accommodation. The option of allowing local authorities to provide directly was a much more sensible and democratic option.”

A Mears spokesman said it was due to meet with the ASH Project to discuss the ongoing issues but denied any wrongdoing and suggested Migrant Help should be involved in discussions: “As the accommodation has transitioned to Mears, our housing managers have been proactive in visiting service users, checking accommodation and scheduling repairs and improvements to bring the accommodation up to standard.

“This, combined with the obvious rise in repairs in the colder months, means there are a higher number than we would expect on an ongoing basis.”

He claimed that out of 5893 repairs since the start of the contract, only two were not completed within the contractual time frame and 695 were boiler repairs. Electric heaters and kettles have been provided to those without hot water for extended periods.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “We demand the highest standards from our contractors and their accommodation and monitor them closely to ensure this is maintained. Defects can and do occur in all properties and when this does happen our contracts clearly set out tight timescales in which they should be resolved.”

A spokeswoman for Migrant Help said: “We are not aware of any logged issues getting lost or not passed on to the accommodation provider. We are confident that our systems and their interface with the accommodation providers systems work without any problems.”