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Delays and lack of sensitivity have been cited by the Welsh consortium for the breakdown in negotiations with the asylum support service. Anabel Unity Sale reports.

Welsh councils firmly put their collective foot down last week when all but one of them withdrew from negotiations with the government's National Asylum Support Service.

It was another controversial act in the 23-month history of the home office's central agency responsible for providing accommodation and support for asylum seekers.

Nass's policy of dispersing asylum seekers out of London and the South East - without giving them a choice - has always attracted criticism, especially in the aftermath of the murder last August of Kurdish asylum seeker Firsat Dag, who had been dispersed to a Glasgow council estate.

Dag's murder prompted home secretary David Blunkett last September to order an internal review into how the dispersal system operates on the ground, the results of which were fed into the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill that is currently before parliament.

A home office spokesperson says the dispersal programme will continue to operate alongside the new system of induction, accommodation, reporting and removal centres proposed in the bill. So Nass' major problem now is its crumbling relationships with the local authorities receiving the asylum seekers it is trying to disperse.

In Wales, the consortium of all Welsh councils, except Cardiff council, decided to withdraw its offer to Nass to provide local authority accommodation to asylum seekers after two years of discussions about creating a contract.

Graham Bingham, lead officer of the Welsh consortium and Newport council's strategic director for social well-being and housing, describes the negotiation process as "extremely tortuous and lengthy".

After much work, a final draft contract to disperse asylum seekers across the 21 local authorities was agreed just before the government announced its review of the system.

Bingham says the consortium was initially happy to wait until after the review but, after seven months, had still heard nothing from Nass and decided it could wait no longer. Bingham wrote on behalf of the consortium to Nass setting an end of April deadline for an answer, but says they received no response. While he stresses that consortium members have good relationships with regional Nass staff, he says getting "the organisation" to respond is impossible.

"We tried to get some kind of answer with increasing regularity from Nass, but failed to get a yes or a no or any information about implementing the contract," he says. "There is a limit to how long you can keep people dangling."

In order to implement the dispersal of 2,000 asylum seekers, consortium members had spent a total £175,000 on establishing a skeleton framework and had made offers of employment to 35 staff. Bingham says the majority of the costs were incurred during the last nine months and now the 21 councils want their money back.

The National Assembly for Wales and the Welsh Local Government Association are backing the consortium's demand for reimbursement. WLGA head of social affairs Lynda Bransbury says that each council in the consortium is at least £8,000 in debt as a result of preparing to disperse asylum seekers for Nass.

"The consortium needs to know that the home office will reimburse its costs," she says. "If the home office doesn't refund them they will have to find the money from other budgets, which will means cuts elsewhere in their services."

Bransbury adds that if the situation in Wales is not resolved then only private accommodation providers and Cardiff council will continue to receive dispersed asylum seekers. She says the government will have to take steps to convince the country that it can still disperse asylum seekers effectively.

"If there is no consortium in Wales, the home office has to create the confidence that the dispersal system is organised in a co-ordinated way," Bransbury says.

A home office spokesperson says the department is disappointed with the consortium's decision, and regrets that is has withdrawn its offer of accommodation. However, on the question of compensation, they add that it "would not be normal practice to reimburse the type of costs outlined by the consortium".

Whether or not the withdrawal of the other councils means more asylum seekers for Cardiff remains to be seen, but a Cardiff council spokesperson says the council is not envisaging a change in its current dispersal arrangements with Nass. Cardiff began its own contract with Nass in April 2001, and is committed to providing 1,000 beds for asylum seekers over a five-year period.

The spokesperson describes the council's relationship with Nass as "constructive".

The Welsh consortium is not the first to threaten Nass with withdrawing its offer of accommodation for dispersed asylum seekers. In February, Edinburgh council said it would withdraw because it claimed the home office had ignored it during plans to set up a detention centre in the city. The council said the home office informed the media about plans for the centre before it consulted the council.

At the time, council leader Donald Anderson said: "We have been keen to discharge our responsibility fully in terms of asylum seekers. In order to do that we need a degree of partnership between ourselves and the home office. The way this has come about has got that off to a bad start."

An Edinburgh council spokesperson says the authority has now "withdrawn from formal negotiations" with Nass, although informal talks are continuing.

Another council, which does not wish to be named, says it never openly criticises Nass or the home office because it would damage their relationship. But it says that it is often misinformed by Nass about the arrival times of asylum seekers.

So is it possible for local authorities to have a constructive relationship with Nass? Sam Newman, who is responsible for Devon council's five-year contract with Nass that started in March 2001, believes it is. But it requires a lot of hard work.

Newman admits he has great sympathy with the Welsh councils because the South West consortium in which Devon was involved also collapsed at the 11th hour.

According to Newman, the reason Devon's contract with Nass works is because of the perseverance of two members of the agency's staff. And unlike most contracts with Nass, Devon does not have a set number of asylum seekers to accommodate.

"The two key members of staff were keen to make something work for us," he says. "They were able to understand our perspective and able to make decisions that stick."

Despite having a contract that works well, Newman says the council still feels like it is "fighting against a bureaucratic system".

"It was difficult getting Nass to accept our needs because they had to get outside of their London perspective to see what works well," Newman says.

"Nass needs to understand that there is a whole different perspective out there. If it did that it would get a huge amount of co-operation and support from local authorities to help them do a very difficult job."

Dave Garratt, deputy director of asylum advice at Refugee Action, says Nass should not expect all councils to be able to work together in a consortium to disperse asylum seekers. He says: "There needs to be an appreciation that local authorities may not wish to or cannot work together on asylum seekers and need to do so separately." Garratt adds that appropriate regional planning, and resources must be allocated if councils are to create their own contracts with Nass.