In an opinion piece published by The Scotsman on Thursday 4 September, Dr Dan Fisher shares five ways the experience of Ukraine resettlement efforts could help build a fairer, more functional asylum system today, based on his recent research. 

 

This opinion piece was published by The Scotsman on Thursday 4 September.

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Scotland – like the rest of the UK – faced an immediate humanitarian challenge. Within just 32 days, the UK Government launched the Homes for Ukraine scheme, which allowed individuals and families in the UK to ‘sponsor’ people’s visas and provide safe housing for a minimum of six months.

Within this, the Scottish Government launched the Scottish Super Sponsor scheme, which permitted people from Ukraine to choose the Scottish Government as their sponsor, eliminating the need to connect with a UK-based family before arriving.

I have spent the past year researching how those schemes were designed and implemented in Scotland. The Ukraine schemes worked because there was unprecedented cooperation between the UK Government, the Scottish Government, local authority body Cosla and councils.

But they also exposed weaknesses: data on arrivals was poorly shared between the different governments, councils were often left to react at the last minute to new arrivals, and the Scottish Government itself became ‘stuck’ with hotel accommodation.

Those lessons matter now more than ever. Scotland and the UK face an asylum housing crisis. The backlog of asylum applications – created by the previous UK Government as it sought to enact its Rwanda plan – has resulted in an unprecedented number of people in the asylum system needing to be housed. An additional, under-reported issue is the rising rate of homelessness amongst refugees once they gain refugee status.

Communities, meanwhile, are frustrated and angry. The use of hotels fuels misinformation about the asylum system, particularly the notion that asylum seekers are receiving something for nothing. Hotels are leased and operated with little to no community engagement, with the information vacuum filled by voices on the right seeking further destabilisation.

These problems are not identical to those of Ukraine resettlement, but the learnings are directly relevant. Here are five ways the experience of 2022 could help us build a fairer, more functional asylum system today:

First, lift the ban on working. For the most part, people seeking asylum in the UK are not permitted to seek employment. By contrast, people from Ukraine were immediately eligible both to work in the UK and seek unemployment support in the meantime.

In rural parts of Scotland, in particular, this provided a welcome source of labour for areas that are experiencing population decline and labour shortages. As a result, people from Ukraine have been able to pay for, or at least subsidise, the housing they have received.

That lifting the ban will act as a further asylum ‘pull factor’ to Britain is an oft-repeated myth, and one has regularly been debunked by academics working in this context.

Second, fund integration initiatives. We know there is no money in the UK Government’s budget. And yet money is being made from the current situation: businessmen Graham King and Alex Langsam are currently vying for the crown of ‘asylum king’, having both made millions from the asylum hotel contracts.

The resettlement of Ukrainians worked in part because councils were provided with funding to provide wrap-around support for those arriving. Crucially, this funding was unrestricted and was not provided to those running hotels.

Third, communicate better with local communities. The Ukraine schemes worked because the public were broadly supportive of Ukrainian refugees. Yet, despite this, communication between the UK Government and communities regarding the Homes for Ukraine scheme could have been better.

Similarly, in the asylum context, there is a dearth of effective communication and no clear responsibility for who should be communicating with local communities.

Fourth, use existing expertise, don’t sideline it. Local authority resettlement teams have years of experience integrating refugees and working with local communities. During the Ukraine response, they were not always brought in early enough. With the asylum housing system needing a radical overhaul, councils and third sector organisations must be at the table from the start.

Fifth, plan for the long-term. Housing and planning laws in Scotland restricted the use of modular or container homes during the Scottish Super Sponsor scheme. While this created a headache for the Scottish Government in terms of finding housing for people, it also meant that we are not now left with thousands of unusable ‘homes’.

Instead, the Ukraine Longer Term Resettlement Fund was established to bring back into use void social housing. Similar long-term planning – in collaboration with local government and the third sector – is required in the asylum context.

My findings, published in a briefing for the Scottish Parliament, show both the successes and the shortcomings of the Ukraine response in Scotland. The research was supported by an Academic Fellowship with the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe), but the views expressed in the briefing and this article are my own and not those of SPICe or the Scottish Parliament.

The asylum housing crisis is often painted as intractable and inevitable given the number of people arriving on these shores. It is neither. The use of hotels as ‘contingency accommodation’ was instead the latest of a list of poor housing decisions made by the UK Home Office and from which we must now seek extraction.

While this won’t be easy, we already know what works and what does not. The Ukraine response showed that both Scotland and the UK as a whole can act at speed and scale when required to. But it also showed that, without better planning, information-sharing and collaboration, the system buckles.

We owe it to those seeking safety – and to the communities welcoming them – to learn the lessons from Ukraine resettlement now.

Dr Dan Fisher is based at the University of Glasgow’s Centre for Public Policy

More information

This opinion piece is based on a recent report written by Dr Dan Fisher as the main output from his Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe) Academic Fellowship. 

Read the report:

SPICe Report: A review of intergovernmental cooperation and communication during Ukraine resettlement efforts in Scotland

Author

Dr Dan Fisher is a Research Associate at the Centre for Public Policy at the University of Glasgow. He is a political geographer with an interest in borders, processes of asylum determination and refugee integration.  

 

First published: 5 September 2025

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This opinion piece was published by The Scotsman on Thursday 4 September.