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Thousands of asylum seekers whose applications are rejected are left without support services for several months before they are deported, according to a senior officer at the Refugee Council, writes Sally Gillen.

Director of the regions Alistair Griggs said that those who had been refused asylum were often waiting for months to be sent back to the country they fled from because of delays between a decison on their application and deportation.

He told an audience of nearly 400 delegates at the National Associations for Councils of Voluntary Service annual conference, that those waiting to be sent to back to their home country were in most cases not entitled to social services help or any other sort of aid.

In some circumstances they would be offered help under community care law, but the government planned to close loopholes in the legislation, which would leave them unprotected, he said.

The National Asylum Advisory Service only offered assistance in a very small number of cases, for example for heavily pregnant women, but even then they were only given full-board accommodation and no financial aid.

Increasingly, he said, desperate asylum seekers from around the country were begging for help from regional Refugee Council officers because they were destitute.