Andy Burnham’s Greater Manchester Combined Authority is set to spend £722,685 on schemes helping asylum seekers navigate housing, welfare and local services. The funding comes as Burnham faces scrutiny over his broader ambitions on migrant policy ahead of any potential leadership bid. The Telegraph has the story:
The mayor’s Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) will spend the money on schemes that help refugees overcome “barriers to accessing housing, welfare and local services”, according to published tenders for the contracts worth a total of £722,685.
The proposed schemes largely target refugees who have already been granted asylum. As part of the “Safe Transitions” programme organised by the GMCA, refugees will be offered “new community guidance” and additional support through a lodging scheme.
Greater Manchester hosts more than 8,500 people in asylum support accommodation, including in hotels and other lodgings across the city.
Allies of Mr Burnham have said he would place the responsibility for providing asylum accommodation on local authorities if he became prime minister by ending multi-billion-pound Home Office contracts with private companies to house migrants. Mr Burnham has previously called for migrants to get immediate access to benefits rather than waiting until they have obtained permanent residence in the UK, but is understood to have abandoned that stance.
The Safe Transitions community guidance says: “People with asylum backgrounds are disproportionately represented within homelessness and rough sleeping services, often due to limited understanding of UK systems, fragmented transition support and barriers to accessing housing, welfare and local services.”
The new service will create “accessible guidance resources” in different languages to help refugees understand “rights, entitlements, healthcare, public services and everyday life in Greater Manchester”.
The total value of the contract for developing the new guidance is almost £370,000.
Worth reading in full.


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Official forms should only be available in English, Scottish and Welsh and there should be no translators paid for with public money. If people can’t speak English tough, they should of learnt it before coming here, if they’re seriously ill get a friend to translate or point and groan.
Basic English note: “…they SHOULD’VE learnt it before coming here…”
“Should’ve” is a contraction of “SHOULD HAVE“, not the meaningless “should of”.
Should’ve, Would’ve, Could’ve (sounds like “of”, but isn’t)
Guess who’s paying for this? Starmer’s Labour government is using British Taxpayers’ money to fund almost all of this, as announced last January:
Trailblazing new £630m funding settlement announced for Greater Manchester – Greater Manchester Combined Authority
Written statements – Written questions, answers and statements – UK Parliament
“Our Ange” Rayner said, “Today, I am pleased to announce that the Government has published details of the Integrated Settlements for Greater Manchester Combined Authority and West Midlands Combined Authority for the period covering the financial year 2025/2026.”
Integrated Settlement funds for 2026 to 2030 – GOV.UK
It seems the West Midlands Combined Authority is being given £1.2 Billion of British Taxpayers’ Money. This is Labour’s idea of “English Devolution”, creating huge regions each ruled by one Mayor ruling it as a little fiefdom, as the Muslim Mayors fully intend to do, and as Sadiq Khan has already been doing for years, creating little “city-states”. He even proposed separate “London Passports” to assist immigrants in coming to the UK.
We really are circling through Dante’s layers of hell. We are now in a situation where we are paying benefits to imported workers and non-workers, because supposedly British people don’t want to do the jobs, so we happily pay benefits to them not to work as well. When did it become the option to say, I don’t want to do that job, because it’s demeaning, unpleasant, tiring etc etc. When I joined the workforce at eighteen after school, there was no option, work or starve, quite simple. Now, I admit, I was lucky to have the qualifications to get a clerical job but many weren’t and they still did the jobs. In later life, with career changes, both my wife and I decided to get off the rat race and we both took less desirable jobs to see us through to pensions. We didn’t need to mass import workers pre-1997, to do any jobs, unpleasant or otherwise, we certainly didn’t need to import people to make coffees in Costa or Starbucks!
If we hadn’t imported all of these workers and non-workers, the domestic population could have taken the work, with the compulsion I had as a teenager. There would be… Read more »
It’s got less to do with “They are doing the work British people will not do” and everything to do with western governments accommodating the globalist corporations demands to keep wages low through mass immigration as a requirement for current and future inward investment.
I’m afraid we just have to hope the good people in Makerfield are paying attention; they outnumber the virtue-signallers and don’t get sucked into the Lowe Ego Trip.
I’m not overly confident.
And on top of giving these illegals housing, heathcare etc, he wants us to pay for interpretors to tell them how to scrounge it all too, beggars belief, please Makerfield do not let Liebour win!.
And on top of the £722k cost of this scheme we can add God knows how much in increased benefit payments because “easier access” is simply woke speech for paying out more in Benefits.
How does the useless oxygen thief think local councils can afford this???
Afford?
He doesn’t care. He’s a socialist.
They can’t. Starmer is using UK government money = British Taxpayers’ money to pay for almost all of it.
Won’t someone rid us of this turbulent priest?
Perhaps some people called Makerfield? Please?