UPDATE: G4S confirm 'severed relationship' with UPM

G4S have confirmed that they will no longer be using United Property Management as their key property provider in Yorkshire and Humberside. A spokesperson for the company stated: 

“G4S has informed UPM that owing to contractual issues we will not be proceeding with them as a supplier of accommodation services under the COMPASS contract. These services will now be provided by Mantel, Live Management Group, Target and Cascade, all experienced suppliers of housing provision and pastoral care services,  whom we have already contracted.”

As always, UPM refused to comment on the issue, redirecting all enquiries to UKBA. It is understood that UPM have been banned from speaking to the press by the Home Office.

Further coverage of the 'severed relationship' can be found at 24-dash.

The Disassociation Game: UPM sacked by G4S?

(originally published on SYMAAG's website) 

United Property Management (UPM) will no longer be sub-contracted by G4S to provide asylum housing in Yorkshire and Humberside. On June 18th the phrase “G4S has selected United Property Management (UPM) as its primary housing partner” disappeared from the G4S COMPASS website. Simultaneously, UPM’s website stopped referring to G4S as “partners”.

UPM has provided sub-standard housing to asylum seekers in our region for years, while UKBA sub-contracted to them, despite frequent complaints from asylum seeking tenants and asylum rights campaigners. Their recent evictions of tenants in Bradford were the focus of a campaign led by Why Refugee Women and SYMAAG. In one case, a woman and her 3 month old baby were moved 40 miles, from Bradford to Doncaster, to a bare flat with no cooker, chairs and only a tiny sink next to the toilet for all their washing needs.

In what could be a remarkable coincidence UKBA announced on the same day (in a letter entitled Corporate Partners – Transition Announcement Letter (2) that “the Transition phase of the COMPASS project has now begun in the North East Yorkshire and the Humber region”. That is, UKBA no longer have to sub-contract to a company who are regarded as unacceptable, even by the standards of G4S!

The next few weeks will see G4S in a frantic search for other sub-contractors paid for by £135 million of public money in Yorkshire and Humberside. We will be subjecting them to the same scrutiny as we put UPM under. No doubt there are also issues of legality relating to the COMPASS contract which was signed with UPM as the named primary sub-contractor (not their replacement organisations).

Whichever sub-contractors G4S select we maintain our view that G4S are prison guards not landlords. Their record is one of abuse towards asylum seekers in this country and elsewhere. We should not be paying them public money to operate this contract.

Bradford Families Facing Eviction

Thanks to another excellent article from John Grayson, the true nature of G4S and United Property Management is getting much needed exposure. Despite many promises of not moving school-age children until the summer holidays and keeping to established standards of housing provision, G4S' subcontractor United Property Management have already attempted to move a young asylum seeker and her 12 week old baby to a shockingly substandard flat in Doncaster. Unfortunately, it is not as if we hadn't been expecting something exactly like this to happen.

Campaigning groups are all too aware of United Property Management's notoriously bad record at providing suitable accommodation for asylum seekers. According to support agencies in Bradford, 35 people have already been removed from the city, yet their destinations are unknown. Dispersed miles away from their established networks of support, asylum seekers can simply fall off the radar and lose the crucial help they need.

Thanks to a loud campaign from activists in Sheffield and Bradford, the UKBA were forced to visit the flat in Doncaster and consequently declared the flat "contractually non-compliant" and "not suitable in its present state for mothers and babies." Whilst they claim to have ordered UPM to relocate the family, they still remain in the flat - with no cooker, table or chair - and 40 miles from what they used to call home.

In the words of John Grayson, "This is the new world of asylum seeker housing controlled by G4S, the worlds biggest security company." Fundamentally, this is the new world of asylum seeker housing controlled solely by financial markets, not critical service provision for those fleeing persecution.

For the full text of John Grayson's article, see OpenDemocracy.

City of Sanctuary, not Private Security

Today's Guardian Northerner blog again pushed the G4S housing takeover into the mainstream media spotlight. It's definitely worth a read, if only for the following shocking quotation from Sheffield Councillor Mick Rooney:

As a Cabinet Member I will enter into a working relationship with G4S without prejudice. I cannot and will not allow their past record to colour my relationship.

Such willing blindness to G4S' terrible reputation is frightening to say the least; so much for the 'proven track record' supposedly demanded from prospective bidders for these housing contracts. To stop a company who is still waiting to hear whether they will be charged with corporate manslaughter from housing asylum seekers in Yorkshire is hardly acting on prejudice, it is common sense.

Keeping an Eye on G4S

CorpWatch, a non-profit investigative journalism and research group, have recently published a brilliant overview of the privatisation of asylum housing in the UK. Reinforcing our concerns about G4S' capability of providing dignified, safe and secure housing for asylum seekers in the UK, CorpWatch's article (written by a London School of Economics masters student, Lily Smith) hammers the point home:


"Saving money means moving people to the cheapest housing and the cheapest housing is not going to be the best housing by any means,” says Stuart Crossthwaite, from South Yorkshire Migration and Asylum Action Group. “When people come here they deserve protection and that's why this country signed the refugee convention and its why Sheffield is a city of sanctuary." 

Unfortunately, the UK government and G4S seem to disagree.

First G4S, then Reliance...

"The poet, the artist, the sleuth - whoever sharpens our perception tends to be antisocial; rarely "well-adjusted," he cannot go along with currents or trends. A strange bond often exists among anti-social types in their power to see environments as they really are. This need to interfere, confront environments, with a certain anti-social power is manifest in the famous story, The Emperor's New Clothes. "Well-adjusted" courtiers, having vested interests, saw the emperor as beautifully appointed. The "anti-social" brat, unaccustomed to the old environment, clearly saw that the Emperor "ain't got nothin' on." The new environment was clearly visible to him."

 (Marshall McLuhan & Quentin Fiore, The Medium is the Massage, 1967)

Reliance Ltd, the company recently contracted to provide NASS accommodation in London and Wales (albeit in a new joint venture with Clearsprings Ltd to form Clearel Ltd), have been under the media spotlight this weekend. The Guardian's investigative journalism team published a series of articles that revealed a litany of abuse cases brought against the company since they took on the deportation and transportation contract that was lost by G4S in 2010. 

Deportees recorded instances of physical, emotional and psychological abuse, ranging from a general lack of respect to occurrences that bordered on simple assault. In the words of their own acting senior charter operation manager, Roy Stagg, "the company is dealing with something more cultural than isolated."

An internal memo leaked to the Guardian revealed the levels to which Reliance is aware of its own failings. The document simply states: 

"Is there actually a problem with our business? The consensus was: yes. Is this a company where women, ethnic minorities and those of diverse religions feel comfortable? Evidence would suggest: no."

This memo, circulated after the company was awarded the deportation and transportation contract, highlights a 'laddish' culture in which respect for other staff members, deportees and even management is critically low. The fact is that these working cultures do not appear out of nowhere. These practices clearly existed prior to the awarding of last years contract and this year's NASS accommodation contract, highlighting a certain 'decided ignorance' on behalf of the Home Office and UKBA. Referring back to Marshall McLuhan's quotation, "Well-adjusted" courtiers, having vested interests, saw the emperor as beautifully appointed."

The UKBA's response to these accusations of abuse, assault and mistreatment is hardly surprising: 

"In all but one of these cases, we have either received no complaint or have conducted a thorough investigation which has found allegations over the use of force were entirely without merit."

Yet, in a case followed by the Guardian's article, an individual who filed a case against Reliance for an alleged assault on a deportation flight back to Nepal had his injuries recorded at Yarl's Wood detention centre, after his flight was grounded. Here, we encounter another private security firm: Serco. Serco's medical team photographed wounds to the individual's wrist, forearms and neck, but the photographs were deemed insufficiently detailed to act as evidence.

Neither the UKBA or the Home Office want another Jimmy Mubenga case. The fact that their new contractors are racking up a similar record to their predecessors - G4S - doesn't seem to alter the government's rosy view of outsourcing critical aspects of the asylum process. Private companies easily evade accountability; remember that this memo was leaked, not published. Whilst the government and establishment continue to idolise the private sector, it takes the acts of "anti-social brats" to hold those appointed to account.

"The new environment was clearly visible to him."

First they came for the asylum seeker...

Again, we have to thank Jon Grayson for another brilliant article on the Institute for Race Relations' website. Published just before G4S won the government contracts for the provision of asylum seekers' social housing in Yorkshire and Humberside, Grayson puts the "asylum market" (G4S' words, not mine) in the important context of wider privatisation in the UK. 

Below is a short extract from Grayson's article:

"The UK is amongst the most intensively covered by private security with one private guard to every 170 people compared with one police employee to every 382 citizens -figures comparable to Hungary and Serbia. Germany on the other hand has much lighter private security with one private guard for every 484 citizens and one police employee for every 326 citizens. The private security business in the UK is worth £3.97 billion annually. Across Europe this is a very powerful lobby for privatising and marketising state functions. Just three companies have 46 per cent of the market in the UK. Just three companies have 56 per cent of the market across the EU. Published data from the EU does not directly name them but itwould be strange indeed if G4S and SERCO were not amongst them."

Please take a moment to read the whole article here.

According to Grayson, policies that affect asylum seekers have continually been used as trial-runs for wider policy-making. The government's obsession with making 'guinea pigs' out of asylum seekers is testament to the extent to which they have been dehumanised, demonised and deconstructed in the media. It seems like they've created a perfect scapegoat; with real lives and experiences obscured an obscene caricature, the asylum seeker is forced to be both invisible and grossly overexposed. When an individual is so heavily obstructed by layers of institutionalised prejudice and preconceptions, it is little wonder that much of the inflammatory press and political coverage goes unquestioned and almost unnoticed.

G4S awarded £203 million pound contract

Today, the inevitable did happen. G4S, Serco and Reliance Security were all awarded their proposed contracts for asylum seekers' social housing across the country. G4S' final contract for Midlands and the East of England, North West, and Yorkshire and Humberside, amounts to a shocking £203 million.

These five-year contracts will put three multi-national security companies in charge of providing accommodation for asylum seekers who are awaiting decisions from the UKBA. Regardless of obvious arguments about the problems of privatisation (arguable relevant to many other issues in contemporary Britain such as the NHS and our motorway network), this outsourcing of critical housing provision crucially ignores the charges and criticisms made against G4S over the past months.

Unsurprisingly, the awarding of this contract comes prior to a potential court case against G4S. The investigation into the death of Jimmy Mubenga, an Angolan asylum seekers who died whilst being deported by G4S guards, has been ongoing for 17 years. Recently, a senior judge declared that the decision on whether the G4S guards will be charged is imminent. This incident, alongside a huge portfolio of complaints of racial and physical abuse, led to G4S' deportation contract with the government being terminated in September 2011. It seems that the government - and G4S - will not allow this horrific record to interfere with 'business' once again.

Faced with another frightening demonstration of profit being put before people, big business are once again set to turn the asylum system into a profitable market. The logic is inevitable: profits will soar as equality plummets. As capitalism seeps into some of the most critical support sectors, we're set to see a system where service users are exploited for the financial benefit of multi-national corporations.

It's not difficult to see the changes. I challenge every reader of this blog to note every time they spot the G4S logo on a daily basis. Cash collection, property management, detention centres, event security, prisons, police services, and now housing; their web is ever-expanding.

As the NHS bill passes through parliament, David Cameron introduces ideas to privatise the roads and the publication of the budget looms on the horizon, the fabric of England's public services is set to change dramatically. Unfortunately, damage control is not enough.

Whilst campaigning groups are reeling against defeat, it is important that pressure on the government and private companies does not stop. G4S may have been awarded the contract, but the final decision on the Jimmy Mubenga case is still to be revealed. Just because the government have decided that G4S are the right "provider" for asylum seekers' social housing, this does not mean that we should follow suit.

March 1st Demonstration Success

Protesting outside Vulcan House, regional HQ of the UK Borders Agency on February 15th

On March 1st, spring sun warmed the 80 protestors gathered outside Sheffield Town Hall to say "No to G4S managing asylum housing". We were a mixed bunch: asylum seekers and refugees from all over the world; asylum rights campaigners from all over Yorkshire and the Midlands; trade unionists opposed to the privatisation of public services; campaigners for migrant women's rights, activists from Palestine (already familiar with G4S for their role in backing the Israeli security forces).

This was the second regional demonstration held in Sheffield against G4S prison guards being given public money to manage the housing of asylum seekers.

Passers-by were mostly keen to take leaflets: there's a lot of understanding in Sheffield about who asylum seekers are and why they come here; there's even more understanding that the privatisation of public services benefits nobody except big corporations like G4S. Some people stopped to listen to the speakers and share their own stories of reduced wages and impossible jobs due to privatisation. A statement was read out from Mafungasei Maikokera, a Zimbabwean refugee who had been charged with assault on G4S! Of course, the charges were dropped and the actual violence came from G4S: "when G4S are at it, it is like a boxing match" she told us.

Apart from a couple of police (one of whom quietly voiced his concerns that G4S were trying to privatise the police force) we stewarded ourselves and marched to the UK Borders Agency where we held another rally in full view - and earshot - of the workers there (some of them supporters of our campaign).

Everybody who wanted to speak got a chance: from a few words of support from people who had travelled from other towns and cities to rousing stuff from SYMAAG's John Grayson, ending with "brothers and sisters, we can beat them!" 6 days after the contract between UKBA and G4S was due to be signed, it is still blank. Every enquiry to UKBA about why this is the case receives a different answer. But the fact remains, G4S and UKBA were mistaken to think that nobody cares about asylum seekers' housing or privatisation.