Afghan refugees lose High Court challenge over Home Office offer of bridging accommodation in Manchester

Afghan refugees who were resettled in London have lost a High Court bid to try to prevent them being sent to Manchester by the Home Office.

Mr Justice Henshaw heard the case of HZ & Ors, R (On the Application Of) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] EWHC 660 (Admin) , which was brought by refugees HZ, MK and FM against Home Secretary Suella Braverman.

The claimants were relocated to the UK following the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban in the summer of 2021.

All were granted indefinite leave to remain and have been provided with support under the Government’s Operation Warm Welcome.

This included temporary accommodation - sometimes referred to as ‘bridging accommodation’ - until settled accommodation became available and for about a year they were accommodated at a hotel in Southwark.

In summer 2022 that hotel terminated its contract with the government, and the claimants were offered accommodation in two hotels in Manchester.

They challenged this and sought orders requiring Ms Braverman to provide accommodation in or near Southwark.

The grounds of challenge were failure by the Home Office to make a proper enquiry into relevant considerations, including those concerning education and employment; and failure to follow its own policy.

It was submitted that Ms Braverman acted in breach of her duty under section 55 of the Borders Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009 to have regard to the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children, and that offering replacement accommodation only in Manchester was irrational and/or in breach of the Home Office’s policy commitments.

The three claimants argued that the Home Office made a policy decision in July 2022 to move temporary accommodation out of London, and did not balance their reasons for remaining in London as part of an evaluation but rather treated them as objections to be rebutted.

Henshaw J said: “On a fair reading of the decision letters, I consider that the [Home Office] did balance the claimants' reasons for remaining in London against the considerations that favoured offering replacement bridging accommodation away from London, and there is no reason to believe that was other than a genuine exercise.”

He said it was true the Home Office did not tell the Afghans about its strategic decision to stop using London accommodation but “it must have been clear to the claimants from the 1 August 2022 meeting, or the conversations shortly afterwards…that [Ms Braverman] was proposing to provide replacement bridging accommodation in Manchester, rather than in London, unless she could be persuaded otherwise in particular cases”.

Henshaw J said the Home Office had concerns about migration pressures on London local authorities and the relative costs of accommodation in the capital and Manchester and “these were all considerations that [Ms Braverman] could properly take into account as part of her strategic decision and when deciding where to offer alternative bridging accommodation to the claimants”.

The claimants also submitted that the Home Office had a published commitment to “ensuring that every Afghan citizen who resettles here has the support they need to rebuild their lives, find work, pursue education..." and it was irrational not to take account of the disruption to these resulting from a move from London to Manchester.

Henshaw J said: “It is true that moves between bridging accommodation can be disruptive, and that is why their impact on education and employment are relevant considerations as discussed earlier.

“It does not follow, though, that [Ms Braverman] was bound to apply the stated policy for settled accommodation to bridging accommodation too.”

He said that with permanent settled accommodation, the Home Office could take time to find the most suitable place but “if a bridging hotel closes, then [it] is likely to have to find, within a relatively short period of time, new bridging accommodation able to accommodate significant numbers of people…in the area of one or more local authorities that are in a position to provide the educational, health and other services necessary for those people”.

This showed a basic difference between finding settled and bridging accommodation, “which undermine the suggestion that the court can, by an application of rationality principles, in effect transpose the stated policy for settled accommodation into the realm of decisions about replacement bridging accommodation”, the judge said.

Mark Smulian