Private housing provider Serco has announced that it will pause its controversial plans to evict hundreds of asylum seekers who have been told they cannot stay in the UK after further protests outside the Home Office base in Glasgow on Saturday morning.

In a statement issued after the latest protests, Serco said it would “pause all further lock-change notices to other asylum seekers who have received negative decisions whilst the law is being tested and clarified”.

Condemnation of the plan gathered cross-party and cross-sector support, with lawyers lodging a legal challenge to one asylum seeker’s eviction notice at Scotland’s highest court, the court of session, on Thursday afternoon.

Serco added that the pause in the plans “will also give stakeholders who support asylum seekers more time to prepare for what is likely to be an increase in the number of people seeking their help”.

The protest, organised by a coalition of Scottish refugee charities and anti-racism groups, included the symbolic burning of eviction notices in a brazier. Supporters insist that many of those Serco intends to evict are still pursuing asylum cases, and could have their rejections overturned at a later date. Glasgow city council has said the threat to change people’s locks is causing confusion and panic among the city’s 5,000-strong asylum-seeking community.

Serco has strongly denied that it plans to make hundreds of people immediately homeless. It said it would give lock-change notices to “no more than six single adult males this week and 12 the next”. It has also confirmed, however, that it is still seeking a “longer-term solution” for 330 over-stayers, 230 of whom had been refused asylum and a further 100 who had been granted leave to remain in the UK.

The Home Office made clear on Thursday that those who have been granted asylum would not be subject to Serco’s lock-change policy.

The protests came at the end of a turbulent week, in which Glasgow city council called on the Home Office to intervene on three occasions, stating that making hundreds of vulnerable individuals destitute could spark a humanitarian crisis on the streets, with the council legally prevented from housing failed asylum seekers and local charities not having the capacity to assist so many people.

Serco leases many of the homes it provides to asylum seekers from housing associations. As the protests took place on Saturday, it emerged that one of the city’s largest housing associations had pledged to rehouse its Serco tenants if they were evicted, and to prevent locks being changed on its properties.

Graeme Aitken, the director of operations at Parkhead House Association, said he had “written to Serco advising that as per the terms of the lease agreement they require our written permission to alter fixtures and fittings, and advised Glasgow city council that we will rehouse our local Serco tenants if evicted”.

Aitken plans to use what is known as the “flipping model”, which has worked well with previous Syrian refugee tenancies, whereby a Serco occupancy agreement is converted into a temporary social housing tenancy without the occupant having to relocate.

Robina Qureshi, the director of the refugee homelessness charity Positive Action in Housing, welcoming Parkhead’s announcement, said she hoped the development would derail Serco’s plans.

Qureshi said she expected other housing associations to follow Parkhead’s lead. “Glasgow’s big players in the social housing movement, Parkhead HA, Queens Cross HA, Maryhill and NG Homes, have all now condemned Serco and are making moves to stop their abandonment of vulnerable people.

“We expect more housing associations to follow from Monday onwards when the first eviction notices are executed. This should effectively derail Serco’s plan to put people on to the street and should give us time to help those who fall through the net.”

Qureshi noted that Glasgow’s asylum housing contract is up for review in 2018-19, and called on the Scottish government to lobby for the contract “to be put back in the hands of Glasgow city council and social landlords so that they can once again humanely accommodate and support refugees and asylum seekers”.

Graham O’Neill, a policy officer for the Scottish Refugee Council, reiterated calls for the Home Office to step in. “The Home Office can only provide calm through taking clear action now. First, it must tell Serco to stop lock changes. Second, it should restore all proposed evictions to the oversight of a Scottish court’s due process.

“If not then the minimum is a far, far longer period of time than seven days, so that services and lawyers can work with those at risk of destitution to get them back into asylum or on to local authority or other safe forms of accommodation and support.”

Rejecting Serco’s assertion that the company had consulted before implementing the plan, O’Neill said: “We would have said this to Serco if they had genuinely consulted and asked the refugee third sector on this. The Home Office must now act.”

