Refugees heading to community bungalow delayed by red tape
WHEN Phil Cotterell heard about plans to transform a school’s storage space into a beautiful bungalow for Ukrainian refugees he couldn’t wait to get involved.
The chairman of governors at St Mary’s RC Primary School in Chepstow has spent hours almost every day at the homely bungalow ever since, and two months on is putting the finishing touches to each cosy room.
“Everything is done really, I’m just hanging some photos up tomorrow morning and we’ve put some toys and teddies in for the kids,” Phil said.
“It’s been really good for me too. I’m retired and I spent my time doing voluntary work, playing golf and looking after the grandchildren. I had time and I wanted to get stuck in.”
But what started as a loving project which filled Phil’s days with joy is now turning into a frustrating nightmare.
Lilya Onopa and her six children, who found out about the bungalow online and got in touch with Phil through his friends on Facebook, have been stuck in Romania’s capital, Bucharest, awaiting the approval of visas by the Home Office.
Yesterday, the family were finally told by Monmouth MP David TC Davies that their visa had been approved. But it’s been a tense wait for the family with a deadline of May 1 hanging over their heads, when they were to lose their temporary accommodation in Bucharest.
Heartbreakingly Lilya, who had fled the small village of Mar’ivka in central Ukraine in March, lost her four-year-old daughter, Liza, and her son Dmytro’s twin in a house fire days before Russia’s invasion.
“It’s just horrendous, isn’t it?” Phil said, recounting the stories Lilya has described to him via a community WhatsApp group where various Chepstow people involved in the project are providing emotional and practical support for Lilya and her children.
“Having worked through this now first hand I think it’s totally inappropriate to have children in a war zone go through so much bureaucracy to get here. We should get them here and then deal with the paperwork when they arrive. I’m totally frustrated by the process.”
It isn’t just the bungalow that the community has come together to help with.
Thousands of pounds continue to be raised for Lilya and her family to help them find places to stay while they wait to be approved by the UK Government, and for when they can finally travel. Lilya described Phil as a “noble knight”.
You can see their fundraiser at www. gofundme.com/f/ukrainian-refugee/ donations
“It’s extremely humbling what Lilya has said but I am just one person in a big group effort here,” Phil said.
“There is a big team of us assisting with this and then there are the people who have helped massively with funding.
“When Lilya got in contact with us it became apparent very quickly that she didn’t have the financial means to get herself and her family here.
“Very quickly we had a company, Alcumus in Cardiff, come forward. The CEO, Alyn Franklin, said he’d heard about Lilya’s story and would pay all the costs. They’ve been fantastic.
“With that money we were also able to book accommodation for them in Bucharest until May 1, thinking by then it would be sorted.
“A Monmouthshire council officer then did their checks and told us the bungalow wasn’t up to the standard required to house the family.
“It would have cost us more than £10,000 and we didn’t have that money. Unbelievably Barratts volunteered to do all the work and pick up the cost.”
Acting head teacher at St Mary’s, Rosie Cerqua said: “The support we have had from the school community, the parish community and the wider community has been overwhelming.
“All of the churches in Chepstow have
been involved and people have been so generous with their time in trying to paint and things like that, and also giving.”
However, Phil says he has lingering fears for the family’s welfare.
“Lilya presented herself to the British embassy in Bucharest on April 15 and they filled out all of the required paperwork,” he said.
“They were all made to do biometric testing, even the young children. You think to yourself what the world is coming to when kids fleeing war are having to do that. Quite quickly Lilya’s visa was processed, then four days later three of the children were through, and then on the 21st another child was through.”
Phil said it was a long time before they received any word of what was happening with two of the children’s visas.
“I’ve done everything my end. I’ve had an enhanced DBS check, I made sure I had all bases covered to give them the best chance of getting here as soon as possible. It took us eight hours to get all of the forms filled out for them.
“But I’ve heard nothing from the Home Office and now I’m at a point where I don’t know where to go. I think these politicians need a reality check, to be honest.”
Phil said he has written to Home Secretary Priti Patel to make a direct plea for help.
Phil is not alone in his frustrations. As of last week the UK had issued 86,100 visas with 117,600 applications.
This compares to 160,000 officially registered in Germany and 100,000 in Italy.
The vast majority of refugees who have fled Ukraine are in countries bordering Ukraine. Poland has now taken three million.
Sian Laius, who lives in Cardiff Bay, is ready to take in a family of four from Lviv.
She applied for them and has now been waiting six weeks, with little knowledge as to how things are progressing with the applications. She said: “It’s been six weeks and they are still not able to fly. They are now in Bucharest after a 14-hour train journey and they are in hostels but they now have to leave those hostels.
“One of the children is still waiting on a visa and all four are waiting on permission to travel.
“I’m reading that the Home Office is being ‘overwhelmed’ by this but they’ve had 86,000 compared to much bigger numbers in other countries. I find it bizarre, to be honest.”
Aaron Reeks, of charitable organisation Caldicot Town Team, has been volunteering at residential centres in Jaroslaw on the Ukraine-Poland border for weeks, where many refugees are being temporarily housed while they wait to go elsewhere. Volunteers for the team have built bunk beds and ferried deliveries of food, clothes and children’s toys for 650 women and children.
“What sticks out for me is the sheer resilience of these refugees,” he said.
“They are utterly immense, grateful and determined. Little things stick out to me, like the rota they have for cleaning the buildings each day to keep them active.
“They haven’t even got windows in some cases, no TVs.
“They come here and everyone is speaking Polish, which many of them can’t understand, they are cold, their partners and husbands are back home, they don’t know where they are or what to think.
“The government’s response has been shoddy and embarrassing and frankly it’s putting them off coming to the UK.”
At St Mary’s bungalow, Phil and his team will continue to do whatever they can for Lilya and her family.
He said: “I believe in fate and I believe Lilya came to me for a reason. Lilya is the age of my children and her sons are the age of my grandchildren. To think we’ve offered a sanctuary to them is really humbling.
“As a community I know we can’t wait to get them here now. I think for the next 12 months, two years, or however long it takes, they will be safe and they will enjoy Chepstow and the people of Chepstow, who will welcome them with open arms as part of our family.”
A spokesman for the Home Office said: “The changes the Home Office has made to streamline the visa system, including simplifying the forms and boosting staff numbers, are working and we are now processing visas as quickly as they come in, enabling thousands more Ukrainians to come through our uncapped routes.”