Would-be hosts pay for refugees’ hotel stays after visa delays
Families frustrated with Home Office after being forced to fund Ukrainians facing destitution in Poland
BRITISH families offering to take in Ukrainian refugees are being forced to pay hundreds of pounds to put them up in hotels in neighbouring countries because of Home Office delays.
One family from Devon have already paid out £1,000 in hotel bills for a “destitute” Ukrainian family who fled the bombed city of Kharkiv and would otherwise be living on the streets of Warsaw in Poland without their generosity.
Another couple from Hull said they would pay rather than see a lone female refugee suffer any more by being forced to live on the streets in Poland after leaving her partner in the besieged city of Sumy to fight the Russians.
The families blamed Home Office delays for the plight of the refugees whom they linked up with two weeks ago under the Government’s Homes for Ukraine scheme but who are still waiting in Poland and other neighbouring countries for their visa applications to be processed and granted.
All said they had been left in the dark on the progress of their applications which they submitted two Fridays ago, the day the scheme officially opened.
They said they had been charged premium phone line rates when they rang up the Home Office’s visa office to seek updates.
Lauren Corbishley, an NHS mental health nurse, and her husband Ian, a teacher, have so far spent £1,000 on hotel bills for Yuliia Meshchierriakova, an accountant, her partner, Glib, an IT expert, and daughter, Maryna, 17, who fled Kharkiv at the outbreak of war.
Both Yuliia and Glib no longer have any income and their two houses in Kharkiv have been flattened in the Russian bombing. The two families made contact through one of the matching websites that have sprung up amid the growing refugee crisis.
Ms Corbishley, who has two spare double rooms for the refugees, was at first baffled by the “hieroglyphics” when she initially had a reply but then, thanks to Google translate, she unpicked the Ukrainian Cyrillic lettering and realised it was from Yuliia.
“Yuliia was in complete despair. She was in a train station with her partner, daughter and their two husky dogs. She said: ‘I have no hope. I don’t know where I am going to go. Help.’ I told her I will help her. I will sponsor you.”
Lauren said she had struck up a close bond with Yuliia – “she is like my best friend, we speak 30 or 40 times a day” – and spent five hours on Friday two weeks ago completing and uploading their application for the Ukrainian family to find sanctuary in their four-bedroom home in Dawlish, Devon.
With Polish accommodation from families overwhelmed by the 2.4 million Ukrainian refugees the country has so far received, Lauren offered to pay for “two or three days” in a Warsaw hotel, believing ministers’ statements that thousands of visas would be turned around in the first week.
“Two or three days” has, however, turned into two weeks at a cost of £1,000. “We have got a hotel until Tuesday. I don’t know what is going to happen after that.
“I can’t keep funding it. I am an NHS nurse so I am not exactly flush. What do you do?” said Lauren.
“Do you keep funding it or do you send them back to the train station where she originally contacted me from. I don’t have the heart to throw her out on to the streets.”
Sarah Ockelton, an NHS dietetics assistant practitioner in Hull, and her partner Ashley Waters, a software engineer, face a similar dilemma as the Ukrainian lone refugee, Nataliya Nikolaienko, whom they are sponsoring, faces being made homeless in Poland from Tuesday when her free accommodation ends.
“We have become friends. We have got camping trips planned. We have the same hobbies. What options would I have but to try to find her a hotel? How can you say: ‘We can’t afford to support you. You are on the streets,’” said Sarah.
Nataliya, who worked in an Electrolux factory in Sumy, was evacuated from the city in a Red Cross convoy, leaving her husband to fight in the Ukrainian army. She is currently in Katowice in southern Poland.
“This is not what we bargained for,” said Sarah. “It’s emotionally draining.”
‘What options would I have but to try to find her a hotel? How can you say: “We can’t afford to support you. You are on the streets”’