Eight weeks after the government promised to resolve the Windrush scandal, numerous victims of the debacle say the government has broken repeated pledges to fix their problems swiftly.

The Guardian has heard accounts from dozens of people affected, who set out a range of serious concerns about the government’s response. Accounts from victims indicate that:

• Some face dire financial difficulties as a result of the Home Office’s mishandling of their immigration status. Some have had possessions taken away by bailiffs, and others remain homeless.

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• The government’s two-week deadline for resolving cases has been repeatedly breached.

• The Windrush hotline number is frequently engaged and hard to get through to.



• Changes to the Windrush taskforce introduced last week are making it harder for victims to get help.

• Numerous Windrush people who travelled to the Caribbean on holiday and have been unable to return to the UK remain stranded abroad, still waiting for help to be reunited with relatives in Britain.

Meanwhile, there has been only slow progress in identifying the 63 people wrongly deported to Commonwealth countries, with just seven found so far.

Despite a commitment from the home secretary, Sajid Javid, to be “proactive” in the search for those people who were deported, the Jamaican high commissioner in London said he had yet to receive details of those people the Home Office believed had been wrongly deported to Jamaica, or even the numbers of Jamaicans possibly deported in error, so that records could be checked for contact details.

He said the failure to pass on this information was strange. “If they really want to pursue and correct the situation, they should seek our help. If there are 63 people, who are they and why won’t you share with us who they are?” the high commissioner, Seth George Ramocan, asked.

Numerous victims called for an urgent hardship fund to be set up to help with the ongoing financial fallout for the families of people who have spent years without an income because they were dismissed from their jobs after being wrongly classified as illegal immigrants by the Home Office. A compensation scheme has been set up but it is unlikely to be able to start making payments until autumn at the very earliest.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Anthony Bryan at home in north London with his partner Janet McKay and son. Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian

Anthony Bryan, who spent five weeks in detention despite having lived in Britain since he was eight and worked and paid UK taxes all his adult life, had his car removed by bailiffs this week because he was unable to pay back debts incurred during the three years he was told he could not work.

He and his partner managed to pay off some of the legal fees accrued when they tried to get him out of detention and stop deportation, but they still owe around £5,000 in overdue council tax and loans from friends.

Bryan returned to his old job with a decorating firm as soon as he got his biometric card last month, and is beginning to pay off loans, but was unable to stop the car from being removed.

“There should be an interim hardship payment to get him back on his feet,” said his partner, Janet McKay, a respite worker who works with children with disabilities, and who without the car is having to rely on night buses after late shifts.

“I’m very angry. The response is not quick enough. We owe money to friends – if it wasn’t for them helping us with the solicitor’s fees he would have been deported. The government ruined our lives and it’s continuing to in a different way. For years we felt stressed, worried about him being locked up. Now we’re stressed about how to pay back the money. We’re still living hand to mouth.”

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Other victims said they had been forced to pawn electrical goods in recent weeks, and were struggling to put credit on their phones or pay for tube fares. One man who was dismissed from his job working as a driver for the NHS and made homeless because the council decided he was an illegal immigrant, and who ended up sleeping in an unheated industrial unit, has since been rehoused but was given an empty flat and had no money for furniture.

Although some have managed to return to work, most are struggling with large debts that built up when they were wrongly dismissed from jobs because they were unable to provide documentary evidence that they had a right to live in the UK.

Cardlin Johnson, who has been helping her two brothers facing Windrush document problems, one in Jamaica and one in London, described the government response as “a shambles”.

Her brother Trevor, in London, a widowed father of two daughters, was receiving increasingly alarming letters from bailiffs about debts accrued over the two-year period when he was told he was not allowed to work and not eligible for benefits. He was struggling to fill in a 16-page form to make a citizenship claim. “He doesn’t have a printer, he can’t afford the internet at home, and he doesn’t have a smartphone,” she said.

Last Thursday the Home Office changed the way it handles requests from Windrush victims. Rather than taking details over the phone, staff are asking individuals to complete an application form and send it with copies of all documents to the Home Office, putting the onus again on the individual applicants to prove eligibility. Support workers say this change is making the process more challenging for claimants. The Home Office said there was also an option of a face-to-face interview and the helpline is still available

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Johnson family as children, including Cardlin on the far left and Trevor and Desmond fourth and fifth from the left. Photograph: Handout

Cardlin’s other brother, Desmond Johnson, has been stuck in Jamaica since 2001 after travelling back for his father’s funeral, and has not seen his daughter in 16 years. Cardlin called the Windrush hotline on Desmond’s behalf, because calling it from Jamaica is difficult and expensive (the number is only free from the UK, and the operating hours fit UK office hours), and was told that a Home Office official would call him in Jamaica.

“He has been sitting by the phone for three weeks, with his documentation with him. No one has rung him yet,” she said. “I feel very angry.”

Case workers at the Labour MP David Lammy’s office said they had 12 Windrush cases where the government’s two-week deadline for resolution had not been met. Some Windrush victims have had difficult experiences at Lunar House, the Home Office headquarters in London, when they have gone for interviews with the Windrush taskforce to try to secure documents.

Nadine Radford QC, a criminal lawyer, accompanied a Windrush victim, Michael (who asked for his full name not to be printed) from Grenada, who moved to London in the late 1960s with his mother but never got a passport because he never planned to travel. The Commonwealth secretary general, Patricia Scotland, asked Radford to help because Michael is very vulnerable, with mental health problems.

“I’m a hardened criminal defence practitioner, I’ve seen it all … but I left there upset and angry,” Radford said. “From what I have observed this has been a racist experience; he left feeling more scared than before he went.”

At the end of the interview they were given a document headed “Windrush satisfaction survey”, asking: “Could you please tell us what you have been happy with today, and in your earlier dealings with the taskforce?” Radford made some critical comments on the form, but staff would not accept the piece of paper and there was no box to post it in.

Michael was told a biometric card would be sent within 10 days. More than three weeks later he has not received one. Radford described the handling of his case as “totally incompetent”.

The large numbers of people contacting the Windrush hotline may be partly responsible for the delays. Over 19,000 calls have been made to the unit, 6,800 of which have been identified as potential cases; 1,600 people now have documentation following an appointment with the team.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The Home Secretary has been clear that we want to put right the wrongs that have been done to this generation. The establishment of a hardship fund is being kept under careful review. However the first priority is to help those affected confirm their status and receive their documentation.”

The spokesperson said “relevant details” had been passed to other governments to help with the process of identifying and contacting individuals who may have been removed from the UK.

Jamaican High Commissioner Seth George Ramocan said: “There has been an effort to correct the situation now that it has become so very open and public.”

He said he was disturbed to hear about the ongoing financial difficulties experienced by victims. “I feel the pain of these people and steps should be urgently taken to alleviate their position. This is a developed society; this is Britain. It does not reflect well.

“So much damage has been done to people’s lives that is inestimable. Take someone who has been dismissed from a job because of their perceived status. That damages a person’s reputation, there’s a psychological impact. I don’t know how you are going to be able to measure those damages. How do you compensate them?

“I was shocked and dismayed and surprised. Individuals living in a country all their lives then to be told they don’t belong here is a sad development. You’re not dealing with numbers, you’re dealing with people.”