Leading figure in LGA asks: ‘Were these people ready yesterday to take any of those on the housing waiting list?’

David Cameron has been warned by the Conservative-run Local Government Association that he must take into account the significant impact on schools, housing and GPs’ surgeries of allowing thousands more refugees into the country.

David Simmonds, chairman of the LGA’s asylum, migration and refugee task force, which coordinates councils’ integration of newcomers to the UK, said it was easy to say that “something must be done”, but that the costs attached to taking in more people had to be recognised.

He added that the offer from the rock star Bob Geldof to put up families in his homes in Kent and London was “pie in sky”.

“If Bob Geldof is willing to make that offer, I’m sure his local council, which will already have a lot of people on its housing waiting list, will be very happy to bring them around this afternoon.”

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Simmonds, who is also the Tory deputy leader of Hillingdon council in London, said a serious look at the finances and legal basis of the refugees coming to the UK should be a priority. “We need to think of the impact on local communities when we know there are already quite lengthy waiting lists for housing in some parts of the country, and pressure on school places and GP appointments, and things like that,” said Simmonds. “The law is very clear. Once people are in the UK, local authorities have an obligation to provide them with those sort of services.

“If the government wants a new approach, where a temporary safe haven is offered but people are clearly not going to be able to stay in the UK beyond the point at which it is safe for them to return to their country, then they need to set out and implement that in policy and law from the start.”

The LGA has not yet been told how many refugees the prime minister has decided that the UK will take from camps in Syria’s neighbouring countries, nor what the legal basis of those people will be.

Local authorities receive extra funds from central government for the first 12 months that a refugee is in the country, but must bear the costs after that point from their own budgets.

Councils have had their government funding cut by 40% since 2010 and local government is certain to be in the firing line again when the chancellor, George Osborne, publishes his spending review in November. Departments where spending is unprotected have been told to prepare for budget cuts worth as much as 40%.

Simmonds said that it was also vital that the government put thought into how best to distribute the refugees to avoid triggering resentment in some parts of the country. He said: “What is their legal status? And we need a sense of what it is as a society that we are prepared to offer.

“It is very striking on the radio this morning people saying, ‘I have a spare bedroom, I will happily take a Syrian refugee’. But were these people ready yesterday to take any of those on the housing waiting list in their local area who may have been here for quite some time?”