Treat communities as partners in settling asylum seekers or expect more Piddingtons

And unless government shows that it is listening to communities from the very beginning, we are likely to see this frustration repeated in communities across the country.

People have every right to ask questions, raise concerns and expect to have a meaningful voice in decisions that will affect where they live, whether it’s Piddington in Oxfordshire or Fallowfield in Manchester, which saw anti-migrant protests last year. Engagement cannot simply mean informing or consulting communities once the direction of travel has already been decided. It has to start early, be transparent and demonstrate that what communities say can genuinely shape what happens next.

There are practical questions that communities are well placed to raise. Are local health services able to cope? Is there sufficient public transport? How will new arrivals access the services they need? Government should be working through those questions with local authorities, services and communities before deciding whether a location is appropriate.

But the people seeking asylum who become caught up in these debates aren't responsible for government decisions. They are people who have left their homes seeking safety, many fleeing war, persecution and serious human rights abuses. And they want what most of us would want for ourselves and our families: to be safe and to have the chance to rebuild their lives.

We should be able to hold two things at once: communities deserve a meaningful voice in decisions that affect them, and people seeking asylum deserve to be treated with dignity rather than becoming the focus of community anger about decisions they did not make.

Getting engagement right matters for everyone. People seeking asylum need to be accommodated in places with the infrastructure and services to support them, including healthcare, legal advice and transport. Local communities need confidence that services have the capacity to support new arrivals as well as existing residents.

Through our work supporting communities across the UK to welcome refugees, we have seen what becomes possible when communities are involved from the beginning. Resettlement programmes such as Community Sponsorship show us that local people can be active partners in welcome - helping newcomers settle, building relationships and creating the conditions for people to become part of their new communities. That principle of involving communities rather than simply making decisions around them should be much more central to how we approach refugee protection.

Piddington should be a lesson for government. If communities repeatedly feel that decisions are being done to them rather than shaped with them, frustration and division will grow. Meaningful community engagement has to be built into how these decisions are made from the outset. That is how government builds trust, responds to local concerns, and creates the conditions for communities and newcomers to thrive alongside one another.

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Amina Khanom is the Director of Reset, which supports the community-led welcome movement across the UK, based in Manchester.

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