Council tax may have to rise to cope with the rise in the number of asylum seekers if Government funds are not forthcoming, a senior Croydon councillor has warned.

Lunar House became the UK Border Agency’s (UKBA) only screening unit in the country following the closure of the Liverpool office on October 14.

The move means each of the asylum seekers who fail to apply when they enter the country will have to come to Croydon to do so.

Chief executive Jon Rouse and Croydon Council leader Mike Fisher will with the UKBA to discuss their options.

Councillor Gavin Barwell, cabinet member for safety and cohesion, said: “We are lobbying to get some mitigation. The ideal thing would be for the decision to be reversed.

Coun Barwell said the Government gave Croydon money to cope with the number of asylum seekers but that it did not cover all the costs.

He said: “It would be unacceptable for Croydon Council to raise council tax for what is essentially a Government decision.”

Council taxpayers already spend millions each year to cover the cost of asylum seekers and will bear the brunt of any extra applicants according to Coun Fisher.

Every asylum seeker who doesn’t declare themselves at a UK border must now travel to Croydon to register.

The asylum seeker experience

Croydon Guardian chief reporter Kirsty Whalley looks at the experiences of two women attempting to stay in this country.

• Tafadzwa Madyara, 28, from Zimbabwe, worked as a journalist at the Daily News, a popular newspaper which was very critical of the Mugabe regime in the late 1990s.

In 2001, government sponsored thugs bombed the paper’s print facility. Taffy was at work when the bombs went off.

She said: “I was at the Daily News the day it got bombed, I left the office and people were standing outside screaming at us and threatening us.”

Her family began to receive threats because she worked for the newspaper. Fearing for her safety, days after the bombing she fled to the UK.

She got a holiday visa and hoped that things would calm down so she could return home.

She called colleagues just before her visa ran out who told her things were getting worse – journalists were being abducted and beaten up – and warned her not to return.

Taffy’s first asylum claim did not go through. In March 2009 she went to Lunar House to start the process again.

She arrived at 5am and queued for four hours before being told to go home and come again the next day.

The next day she was let into the building and given a number. She was eventually seen after lunch. When called she was asked for her documents.

She said: “I was interviewed and the woman asked me a lot of personal questions about why I was there.”

After the interview she went to get fingerprinted and was then taken into another interview room by two men.

She said: “They said I had been lying about where I came from, that I was not really from Zimbabwe. They asked me how I arrived and I said I had an uncle called Bright who paid for my ticket. In Zimbabwe we do have names like that, but they started laughing and said I was lying – they made me cry.

“I eventually asked them what the purpose of the interview was if they did not believe anything I said.

“I had to ask them not to raise their voices to me.

“That was my first experience of Lunar House, it was very traumatising.”

As an asylum seeker, Taffy is not allowed to work. She does not get food vouchers and she does not qualify for housing.

She suffers from a painful spinal condition, which means she has to take morphine and other pain medication.

She has been living with friends and paying rent from money she had saved and money she had from her uncle, which has now run out and she is worried about losing her flat.

She said: “My flatmates have become like sisters to me and help me when I am in pain. I don’t know what I would do without them.”

She is appealing the refusal of her asylum claim and is hoping to have a decision by January next year.

• Abigail Chakanuyka, 47, from Zimbabwe, applied for asylum in 2002. She is HIV positive and lives in a two bedroom council flat with another asylum seeker from Kenya who is also HIV positive.

She had been working in the UK when she fell ill and had the disease diagnosed.

She applied for asylum on compassionate grounds as she is not able to get treatment for her illness in Zimbabwe and feared if she went home she would die within the year.

After putting in her claim, she was referred to social services who put her in a bed and breakfast for a few days before moving her to a flat in Croydon.

After her initial application, she did not hear from the Home Office for four years and, despite numerous phone calls and visits to Lunar House, no one could tell her about her case.

She eventually approached her MP Malcolm Wicks who wrote to officials at Lunar House.

Abigail said: “They said they were looking at the case but had a back log and would get to my case sometime in summer 2011.

Abigail and her housemate get some help from Croydon Council. They get £26 a-week in food vouchers to spend at Tesco, a set amount of money for their electricity meter and a monthly bus pass. They both get anti-retrovirals for their condition from Mayday Hospital.

She said: “The local authority is sending us back to the Home Office as they say we need to have more disabilities in order for them to look after us.

“If we get kicked out of this flat I have no idea where I will go.”

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