Reset are here to assist you with providing consent to Community Sponsorship Groups in your area.

Your regional or national Strategic Migration Partnership can assist you too, with Community Sponsorship taking place in every nation and region in the UK, experience is increasing and knowledge is being shared.

As a Local Authority, when a family is welcomed through Community Sponsorship, you are able to claim funds to support the children’s education from the Home Office. Your Local Health Board or Clinical Commissioning Groups can claim for healthcare costs for each family member.

Why do we need to be involved?

Local Authorities are a key partner in Community Sponsorship for the Groups working across the UK to welcome refugees to their communities. You’re asked to be involved in Community Sponsorship projects so that you are aware of the refugee families who will be welcomed into your community. You’ll be asked to assist the Group in ensuring their safeguarding measures are fit for purpose, and work on a local level, as well as connecting them with the services on offer for newly arrived families.
You’re not being asked to approve the application, or carry out security checks on the Group members; the Home Office do this through a rigorous application process.

Acceptance of the refugee family

You’ll be asked to approve the family who are arriving to your area, alongside the Group. You may need to liaise with the CCG or health board and/or your local educational department to ensure any health or additional educational needs can be met. You will also be able to put in claims to the Home Office for funds for education for children and young people.

Taking on support

In the very unlikely event of a breakdown in the relationship between the welcomed family and the Group, or ongoing support needs after the end of the formal sponsor agreement, the Local Authority may take on a leadership role in the resettlement of the family with funding made available to you from the Home Office.

You’ll be asked to complete the consent form or write a letter of permission from your Local Authority to the Home Office for the Community Sponsorship Group to submit alongside their application.

Groups are required to fundraise at least £9,000 towards the costs of the first year of support. As the group provide integration support for the first 12 months following arrival the tariff connected to the government’s resettlement scheme is not paid to the LA. However, some funding is still available:

• Clinical Commissioning Groups or health boards can claim £2600 per family member directly from the Home Office. This is a single payment that needs to be claimed within the first 12 months
• Local Authorities can claim up to £4500 towards education of children aged 5-18 years and £2250 for children aged 3-4.
• The group can claim Home Office funding of £850 per adult to contribute towards costs of ESOL, this is claimed by the Lead Sponsor.
• A Local Authority can claim Exceptional Cost payments in order to cover social care provision for refugees. There is no minimum or maximum amount that can be claimed but Exceptional Costs cannot be claimed for support provided to a Refugee that would normally be funded through health or education funding or through welfare payments. It is essential that before incurring Exceptional Costs, a Local Authority should seek in principle agreement in writing from the Home Office or risk having the claim rejected.

We also have a training page to explain this in further detail and how to access these funds and costs to prepare for.

More information on funding can be found in the Home Office’s funding instructions.

The application process for Community Sponsorship Groups is rigorous and all applications are approved by the Home Office.

In order to make the process as manageable for as many Groups as possible, Groups are able to apply for approval in principle subject to meeting certain conditions, primarily finding accommodation. This could impact the consent that you provide because you will be invited to inspect the property before it is approved. In this case, we recommend including this in your letter of consent and stating that your consent is subject to approving the property, alternatively, you can use the template consent form.

Following the successful pilot of the PSAP scheme in 2021, Local Authorities may be approached by Community Sponsorship Groups who are applying via the Principal Sponsor Application Process.

The Principal Sponsor Application Process allows groups to tailor their application form and property search to a specific family they have been referred and accepted. You will still be asked to provide your permission for the group to apply to the Home Office, however, the sequencing of the application will work differently to traditional applications.

What is a Principal Sponsor?

A Principal Sponsor is an organisation (the Lead Sponsor) who have previously successfully applied to, and welcomed a family through the Community Sponsorship programme. This term is applied to the organisations selected by the Home Office to participate in the process as having a successful track record of refugee resettlement. You can find a list of current Principal Sponsors on the Reset Training website. Local Authorities have shared with us that they have more confidence in working with those who have a track record of Community Sponsorship in this way.

What is the purpose of PSAP?

In recognising the experience of Lead Sponsors through this process, the Home Office introduced this as a response to their wish to make the sponsorship process quicker and easier. Groups are also able to plan their support for a specific family, rather than working in the abstract. Groups who have welcomed through this process have all said that this is the biggest benefit that they have seen; they are able to get a ‘head-start’ on building bespoke support to a family, rather than preparing their applications for all eventualities.

What is the Principal Sponsor Application Process?

What risks are there in Community Sponsorship?

It’s so important to be upfront about the risks associated with Community Sponsorship. When you are considering your permission process, this is something you will want to take into account.
It’s important to keep in mind that of the many hundreds of refugees welcomed by Community Sponsorship Groups in the UK, a relationship breakdown between group and family is extremely uncommon. The outcomes for both the resettled refugees and for the community groups that support them have been overwhelmingly successful and positive. In a very small minority of cases (2%), the Local Authority has assumed the responsibility for supporting resettled refugees.
Whilst this is not exhaustive, you can find below an outline of some of the risks and the mitigation factors that are built into the programme.

Who gives permission to apply?

Deciding who in your Local Authority needs to give permission for the Group to participate in Community Sponsorship will be determined by you. If you are in an area which is not yet participating in refugee resettlement, it may not be immediately obvious who this will be.

There’s a wide range of individuals within Local Authorities who have signed permission letters for Community Sponsorship, including Housing Options Manager, Commissioning Manager, Chief Executive, Councillor and Social Inclusion Manager – only you know which will work for you.

They should have sufficient authority within the Local Authority to provide this. As you work through who should give permission, keep the Community Sponsorship Group informed of progress; it’s really easy to think that this is a simple process from the perspective of the Group, so do be clear about likely timescales and the process you will need to follow.

How long is permission valid for?

The permission you provide will be valid for a 6 month period from the date of signing. If the Group do not fulfil their conditions for approval, or it is not possible to allocate a family to the Group within this time, you will be asked to reconfirm their consent via email, which will be requested by the Home Office Community Sponsorship Team.

Questions to ask to determine who needs to give permission

• Is your Local Authority participating in other resettlement programmes?
• If you are participating in the scheme, is the lead officer authorised to give consent on behalf of the Local Authority? If you are not participating in the scheme, which department leads on the closest programme to refugee resettlement?
• Who/which department would take on responsibility for the resettlement in the unlikely event of a sponsorship breakdown?
• Is there likely to be any objections raised to the resettlement of refugees in the area by members of the Council?
• Does this need elected member consent? Does this need senior management consent?

Remember that you might find that the person carrying out the day to day work on providing permission may not be the representative of the Local Authority who needs to give consent to the Home Office. Make sure the Community Sponsorship Group are aware of this.

Consent Form

We’ve developed a consent form for you to use to document and provide your considerations and permission for a group to apply. You don’t need to use this and may choose to write your own letter of consent. You can download this from the bottom of this page. Please note that for this to be accepted by the Home Office, it must be either inserted onto your letterhead, or sent in the body of an email from the person providing permission, with their email signature in place. This can be sent to [email protected] as well as to the Community Sponsorship Group.

Local Authorities are not expected to grapple with their concerns alone, you can always speak to Reset or your SMP, however, we’ve provided some answers to commonly asked questions below.

Do groups get any support?

Reset provides advice and support to Groups at every stage of the Community Sponsorship process. This includes support in the application writing process, two part required training (organised by Reset before the refugee family arrives), application checking service as well as support with any challenges that Groups might encounter after the arrival of the family.

Moreover, each Community Sponsorship application needs to be submitted by a Lead Sponsor. The Home Office requires that each Lead Sponsor have a Charity or Community Interest Company (CIC) number. Some Groups decide to register as a charity themselves, but many others work with a larger charity, which acts as a Lead Sponsor. These organisations not only offer support to groups, but also take responsibility should things go wrong.

How is the Group’s work with resettled family monitored?

As part of the Community Sponsorship agreement with the Home Office, Groups agree to participate in follow up visits. Reset lead on these visits, accompanied by a member of the Home Office to help Groups ensure that their support obligations are being met. A representative of the Local Authority will also be invited to participate in the visits. We meet with both the group and family, using an independent interpreter supplied by Reset.

What if the refugee family needs support beyond 12 months?

It is very rare that the LA is required to step in and provide support beyond 12 months. In practice, we find that many groups decide to continue providing some kind of support to the resettled families who will have often formed strong bonds with their group, and also the wider community. If further support is required, it will be identified through the Post Arrival Support Visits and a managed handover will be agreed with Local Authority prior to the end of the sponsor agreement. At this stage the Local Authority can also start claiming additional funds from Home Office – in line with those available to families resettled through Local Authority programmes.

What happens in case of sponsorship breakdown?

The Home Office will work with the Group and the Lead Sponsor to do everything within reason to avoid the sponsorship breakdown. From January 2021, Lead Sponsors can be supported via the Community Sponsorship Backstop Fund to resolve challenges faced in supporting a group and the refugee family. Should the Group disband, the Lead Sponsor would be expected to put in place steps to continue the support of the family. If this is not sustainable or possible, the Local Authority may be asked to continue the support.

In the event that a sponsorship arrangement breaks down, an appropriate level of funding will be made available to the local authority, within the existing tariff structure, to provide the necessary support to the resettled family. It is intended that the Local Authority will not suffer financially.

How is housing for the family provided?

The Community Sponsorship Group is obligated to ensure that accommodation is made available to the family for 2 years. Most groups approach private landlords, some are able to secure housing association property, some even decide to purchase a property that is then rented out to the refugee family. A particular benefit of the scheme is that, especially in more expensive areas, Groups often find landlords who decide to offer their property for a lower rate than they would have received on an open market. As a result, the availability of affordable properties increases, even if ever so slightly. The Local Authority are invited to inspect the property to ensure it meets local housing standards and the area must be approved by the local police using the Home Office Police Consultation form.

What about housing beyond 2 years?

Groups are asked to start working on long term housing solutions for the refugee families as soon as they arrive to ensure that affordable, sustainable accommodation will be available for the family to live in.