THE £55M HOMELESS REFUGEE TIME BOMB

Surge in costs after Tories botch up asylum processing

- BY NORMAN SILVESTER

THE Red Cross should be drafted in to solve a spiralling refugee housing crisis, campaigners have demanded.

The Record can reveal that in Glasgow alone, the council spent £16.5million between April and July 20 this year housing homeless people in hotels and B&Bs.

Official figures also show that of 2242 homeless people being housed in hotels and B&Bs in the city, 1615 were refugees.

In the first nine weeks of that period, the hotel and B&B cost was £7.2million but by July 20 it had risen by a further nine million to £16,598,706.

At that rate of spending, the final bill for the current financial year could be as high as £55million - compared with the £45.2million spent last year - a rise of about £10million.

The increase in spending has been blamed on a surge in migrants being given leave to remain after applying for asylum in the UK, as the Tories failed to process applications when they were in power.

Last night, the Scottish Tenants Organisation (STO) said the crisis needed radical action.

Campaigns coordinator Sean Clerkin says the International Red Cross should be called in if the Scottish and UK governments can't come up with enough money to bail out Glasgow.

He said: "What we have is a man-made disaster that has turned into a tsunami. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

"We need the International Red Cross to intervene in Glasgow as they do across the world in other homeless and humanitarian crises.