134,200 Ukrainian refugees have arrived in the UK – now what?

Six months ago, when Putin’s war on Ukraine began, our screens were filled with pictures of women and children fleeing their country (some four million by the end of March) and for many Brits, those images of families saying goodbye through train windows were the catalyst to doing something. 

Within days, over 150,000 had signed up to become hosts, offering up their spare rooms, their summer houses, their annexes. Some put themselves down for a year, others indefinitely; many signed up for six months, the minimum the Government was asking for, not knowing then how long the war would last or what it would really be like to host a family who had been through so much.

Since then, despite the many teething problems and bureaucratic hurdles, 134,200 Ukrainians have arrived in the UK under the Family Visa Scheme and Homes For Ukraine. Meanwhile, the war rages on; for the people who fled Ukraine, the latest scenes from Kyiv must be devastating. For the people who took them in, the realisation has begun to dawn that very little has been put in place for what comes next.

Karen and Mark* began hosting a young woman and her two-year-old in April at their home in the west country. Their children having fled the nest, they had bedrooms to spare and felt compelled to help. “I think I went into this quite naively,” says Karen. “But, like a lot of people in those early days, you just think you’ve got to do something.”

They have loved having Yulia*, but Karen admits it has involved far more work than anticipated. She has been a kind of liaison officer, sorting out all Yulia’s paperwork, taking her to the job centre to apply for universal credit, securing her biometric permit for residency, registering her at the GP, ensuring the little one is up to date with her jabs, and regularly driving them from their remote village into town so Yulia can meet up with Ukrainian friends.

It’s the paperwork that has been ‘a nightmare’, she says. “I had to write to my MP I don’t know how many times.”

Karen has been struck by how much it has been like having one of her children at home again. “They rely totally on you. It’s sort of like having a big teenager again. The lifts and the emotional needs. But that was all part of what I was happy to do.”

But after six months, Karen and Mark need their home back. It didn’t take long to realise there was limited support in place. “The council have said to me ‘You’ve got to make her homeless’,” says Karen, clearly upset by the notion that this is one of the few options available to them. “I can’t.”

The number of Ukrainian families presenting as homeless in England has increased by 22 per cent in the last month – in that time, 350 have registered as homeless (experts say the real number at risk of homelessness will be higher). The Local Government Association (LGA), the national representative body for councils, say they are “deeply concerned” about the growing numbers.

When a hosting arrangement comes to an end, the routes currently open to guests are: find a new host, rent somewhere privately, or agree with the host to extend the stay. If a guest needs help to be rehoused, their best bet is to register as homeless or at risk of homelessness to prompt the local authority to step in – they might arrange temporary accommodation, council housing, or help with rematching. In reality, there is often little they can do; housing was already in short supply, and though they receive funding from central government (£10,500 per person), backlogs often mean dealing with those who came is a slow process.

Stan Beneš, from Opora, a charity which supports Ukrainians in Britain, says a lot of people “find themselves in hotels before another solution can be found”.

As six month sponsorship arrangements come to an end, it is “absolutely crucial”, says Cllr James Jamieson, chairman of the LGA, that support for hosts is enhanced, particularly as inflation and energy costs increase “so new or existing hosts are encouraged to sponsor in the longer term.”

More work is needed, Cllr Jamieson says, “to be clearer to hosts and their guests about the challenges in finding affordable housing across the UK”, citing the “significant pressure” council housing and homelessness services are already under.

Renting on the private market is “virtually impossible” for someone like Yulia, says Karen. “You’ve got to pay three months’ rent upfront. Housing benefit will not match up to what they need.”

Their “best hope”, says Karen, is to find her a new host, someone in town, where Yulia would rather be as she has friends there. “I feel very guilty about not being able to help her anymore,” Karen says. “I’ve been working on this now for the last five weeks because I don’t want this to end in crisis.”

Karen and Mark were genuinely glad to open their home to refugees. “We wanted to do it [...] but as much as I’d love to have them [for longer], I just can’t do it any more. Six months is what I said I’d do. I had no idea how little support there would be.”

In some cases of hosting, relationships may have broken down, but for many, the government’s monthly “thank you” fee of £350 (assigned per household, not per guest, for 12 months) doesn’t go far amid the cost of living crisis; others simply need their spare room back. The government points out that most hosts want to continue to provide support, according to recent data.

Beneš says a “diminishing amount of potential hosts” is going to cause problems.

Local authorities, operating “with the meagre resources they currently have and not many concrete incentives coming from national government” are in a difficult position, he says. Council housing isn’t usually a viable alternative. “There isn’t enough of it at the best of times, there are long waiting lists and it’s just not a suitable solution for the vast majority of people.”

A government spokesman said councils had “a duty to ensure families are not left without a roof over their heads. The majority of sponsors want to continue hosting for longer than six months. Where guests do move on they have a number of options including to enter private rental or find a new host to sponsor them.”

Graham Ellis set up a support group for fellow hosts and guests where he lives in Wiltshire. Graham, 68, a town councillor, and his wife signed up to host “indefinitely”, but he knows families who were only able to offer six months. “There’s a liaison going on between hosts and guests saying ‘I hate to do this, but let’s make you homeless to get something done’, which is shocking.”

Wendy Hodges-Jackson, 50, and her husband Ian, 53, have had a family of four and their dog living in their summer house since April. At the end of the month they plan to extend their agreement. “We’re continuing on with the same process at the moment because there isn’t really an alternative. [...] They either go home to a country that’s still at war or they stay with us.”

Iryna Savchuk, 23, can still recall the first night she and her sister, mother and grandmother spent at the Hodges-Jacksons’ home in Hertfordshire. They had fled the bomb shelters of Kyiv when they saw a Facebook post about Britain’s Homes for Ukraine scheme. “It was like a fairy tale. From the war we found ourselves in paradise. We were welcomed very warmly: our own bed with pyjamas, our pictures everywhere, plenty of food in the kitchen.”

Wendy has helped Tanya, Iryna’s mother, get a job in a hotel. Iryna, who has a masters degree in marketing, works as a client delivery coordinator in London. Another member of the family, Katya, 18, is finishing her veterinary degree online and working at a local kennels. “How our future life in the UK will continue we do not know,” says Iryna. “It will largely depend on the situation in Ukraine and what steps the UK government will take towards Ukrainians.”

They hope to rent somewhere eventually. In the meantime, Wendy has started to ask for a small contribution towards the electricity bill. “What happens after three years? [...] There’s no plan from the government.”

One host I spoke to fears having to break it to her guests – a mother and her teenage daughter – that they’ll have to find alternative accommodation in January. “There is nothing concrete we can offer them,” she says. “Our guests are lovely, the mum is working very hard in two minimum wage jobs. [...] It makes it even harder to tell them that sometime soon they will have to move on.”

Another host would like to free up his room so he can offer it to someone new. His current guest “will be well looked after regardless. We won’t put her on the street, there’s no way that’s happening. But that’s not the case for all.” He hopes his guest might move in with her partner, whom she met here, but adds: “We made a promise; the country made a promise to these people that they would be welcomed open-armed and fairly treated.”

He worries that in another six months it will be much the same story. “They’re just kicking the can down the road.”

*Name has been changed.