One man has yet to receive an ID card; another has been unable to open a bank account

Four months after they first raised their situation with the Home Office, two Windrush citizens are still waiting for essentials including residence cards, suitable accommodation and the right to open a bank account.

The Home Office says the process should ordinarily take up to two weeks. But there are concerns that the two men’s situations are not exceptional and may have been replicated across the country.

The Guardian has heard from one man, Balvin Marshall, 64, who was housed by Haringey council in a property without any carpets and who says he has been unable to open a bank account.

Another man, Oliver Hutchinson, 63, is still staying with family while he waits for his biometric residence card to be issued, despite having raised his case with the Home Office in May.

David Lammy, the MP for Tottenham, said the delays were unacceptable and the Home Office had reverted back to the “slow pace and inefficiency that helped create these problems in the first place” now that Windrush had disappeared from the headlines.

“After a national scandal like Windrush, the very least you would expect is for the government to act fast to remedy its past mistakes. Instead what we’ve seen is nice words and little action,” Lammy said. “I expect the delays are not confined to Tottenham and likely exist across the country.”

Hutchinson came to the UK from Jamaica in 1970 and says he lived underground for a long time. “If I don’t get the biometric card then I cannot get a national insurance number,” he said.

“I go to the jobcentre and do an interview. It’s all going well and then they say: what is your national insurance number? I say I don’t have one … I still have no permanent address. I first applied in May.”

Hutchinson said the Home Office had accepted he was a Windrush citizen and he was not sure why they were taking so long to give him an ID card so he could start his life.

However, the Home Office said that when Hutchinson first spoke to the taskforce he said he had entered the UK in 1976, which would mean he was not part of the pre-1973 Windrush cohort. He later clarified it was actually earlier.

Lammy’s office, which has a caseworker dealing with Hutchinson’s case, said Hutchinson had corrected his date of arrival to 1970, which was reflected in his old Jamaican passport.

“Either way, under the Windrush guidance he still qualifies as there are pre-1973 arrivals and post-1973 arrivals up to 1988, which is when immigration controls tightened up. As far as we know he has lived continuously in the UK from the time he entered,” Lammy said.

Hutchinson said he felt worse now than before the Windrush saga had been exposed. “I am more stressed now because I am thinking: what is going on? This will never be resolved.”

Marshall, who came to the UK from Jamaica in 1972, said he was granted a biometric residence permit a few months ago but he had been struggling to open a bank account because he did not have all the documentation needed.

“My sister is helping me out at the moment. The council gave me a place but there is no furniture, there is no carpet. The council are supposed to be doing something about it but for me it takes so long.”

Marshall said he hoped to get the right letters to open an account, and the issue was more with the bank than the Home Office. He said he wished his flat could be made to feel more like a home.

“The house is comfy compared to the situation before – I was homeless before – but it just doesn’t feel fully like home. I like the place but it just would be nice to have some basic furniture – a table and chairs – and a carpet,” he said.

A spokesperson for Homes for Haringey said it had been supporting Marshall during his move from temporary housing to a permanent property. “Furniture and carpets are not provided to people moving into our properties but due to Mr Balvin’s circumstances our support and wellbeing services have made sure he has essential household furniture and white goods. We have also helped him apply for a grant that he can use to cover the costs of fitting carpets,” they said.

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Last month the Labour MP Emma Dent Coad said Windrush citizens were “still waiting for immigration status confirmation” amid Notting Hill carnival celebrations. She said it was ironic that a tribute to them would take place at this year’s carnival when some of those living in the Kensington borough were still in tenuous positions.

The Windrush generation comprises people who arrived in the UK between 1948 and 1971 from Caribbean countries. The name is a reference to the ship MV Empire Windrush, which arrived at Tilbury Docks, Essex, on 22 June 1948.

The Home Office did not keep a record of those granted leave to remain or issue any paperwork confirming it, meaning it is difficult for Windrush arrivals to prove they are in the UK legally.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The home secretary has made clear that the taskforce aims to complete the decision-making process within two weeks of all the evidence being gathered. However, some cases are more complex and therefore take longer to resolve because the taskforce undertake greater efforts to collect and assess evidence supporting the individual’s application.”