A Newbie's Guide to Community Sponsorship

The UK Community Sponsorship scheme (CS) is the second scheme in the world to allow for the private sponsorship of refugees by local community groups. Canada has been running a similar scheme since 1979, when private sponsorship was introduced in order to resettle refugees fleeing conflict in South East Asia. Since then, over 300,000 refugees have been resettled via private sponsorship in Canada, allowing individual communities to play a significant role in providing resettlement support.

In 2015, over one million refugees arrived in Europe. The response of many European countries was largely that of securitisation rather than protection. To fill this gap, grassroots volunteers across Europe mobilised themselves to respond to this humanitarian crisis. Over half a million volunteers provided food and medicine, accommodation, legal support, and offered solidarity to the new arrivals. Given its geography, the UK did not experience the same numbers of high arrivals, but UK citizens were frustrated with the slow response of the UK government and demanded that more should be done to help. Partly in response to this criticism, CS was introduced in the UK in 2016.

The scheme involves a group of volunteers coming together by forming a charity or by working with an existing charity to resettle a refugee family in their local community. It empowers and enables local groups to become directly involved in supporting the resettlement of refugees. Sponsors provide wide-ranging resettlement support for twelve months and housing support for two years. Prior to gaining Home Office approval, groups must satisfy a set of criteria, including fundraising at least £9000, obtaining local authority consent, creating a resettlement plan and securing accommodation for the family. Given the high expense of rental accommodation in the UK, this has often been a significant barrier for some groups, particularly those in London. Once the application has been submitted, the Home Office visit the group and approval is granted if the resettlement plan meets all of the requirements. The Home Office then work with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to identify a family for resettlement. Once a family has been identified, the group arrange to meet the family at the airport and the resettlement plan begins.

The scheme was welcomed in the UK and received cross-society support. In July 2016, the first family was welcomed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and housed in a cottage within the grounds of Lambeth Palace. Since 2016, over 400 refugees have been resettled through CS, supported by around 70 sponsorship groups. Faith groups have continued to be involved, and more recently groups have been formed from rugby clubs and universities.

In 2017, a team led by Professor Jenny Phillimore from the Institute for Research into Superdiversity (IRiS) at the University of Birmingham began a four year evaluation of CS. Findings revealed that CS benefitted both the volunteers and the refugees. Volunteers reported that their involvement helped them to make new friends and gain skills, whilst the refugees benefitted from the social networks of the volunteers. The scheme itself is centred on social connections. The refugees were assisted by volunteers who played a key role in obtaining school and English language lessons, registering with a GP and connecting the families with other people locally. Read the full evaluation report 

Up until 2020, CS formed part of the Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme (VPRS) which aimed to resettle 20,000 refugees affected by the conflict in Syria. In 2019, the UK government pledged to support CS for a further 5 years with the introduction of a new global resettlement scheme. However, 2020 was an extremely difficult year for refugee resettlement as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the virus spread, borders were closed, and search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean were temporarily suspended, with many refugees awaiting resettlement stranded in camps.

Despite the challenges of 2020, private sponsorship has continued to be supported globally. Countries continued to develop their own versions of the scheme throughout 2020, but at the time of writing, resettlement under CS in the UK is on hold with no clear date of when resettlement flights will resume. Groups in the UK have continued to form and fundraise throughout the pandemic, with a number of groups ready to host a family once resettlement flights resume. The pressure is now on the UK government to introduce the new global resettlement scheme and restart resettlement to allow communities to welcome refugees through CS once again.

If you are interested in joining or starting a Community Sponsorship group in your local area, further information about the scheme is available from RESET, an organisation set up to support community sponsorship in the UK.

Natasha Nicholls is a Doctoral Researcher in IRiS at the University of Birmingham. Her doctoral research focuses on the UK Community Sponsorship scheme, specifically on the role of the volunteers within the scheme and how involvement in CS shapes the civil society trajectory of volunteers. She also works as a Research Assistant at IRiS for the MIDIC project which focuses on the intercultural competence of migrant’s descendants.