Final Report

Introduction

1. In our Interim Report we described the arrangements made by the Board for receiving the main influx of Uganda Asians between September and November 1972, and the way in which 16 temporary resettlement centres was set up and administered. We also gave an account of the progress that had been made in resettling Asians into the community up to 31 March, 1973. The present report deals with our work as a whole until 31 January, 1974, when the Board was dissolved.
2. As stated in the Interim Report, the Board's duties and powers were set out in a Trust Deed made between the Home Secretary, members of the Board and the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury. In brief, we are empowered to assist United Kingdom passport-holders and their dependants who were ordinarily resident in Uganda on 4 August, 1972, and the children of any such persons born since then.
3. By 31 March, 1973 a total of 28,165 persons had passed through the Board's reception arrangements. Since then there have been further arrivals, but on a very much reduced scale: the total number of those who have passed through our hands on arrival in this country is 28,608. The two largest categories of persons who arrived here after 31 March, 1973 were a number of United Kingdom passport-holders who went direct to India from Uganda and stateless individuals living in United Nations camps, following their expulsion from Uganda, whose families had already come here from that country. Of the total of 318 such persons, 101 were admitted to the Board's resettlement centres.
4. Of the total number of people who have passed through the Board's hands 6,621 decided when they arrived here to make their own arrangements for settling in the community, and the remainder - 21,987 people - were accommodated, for varying periods of time, in the Board's resettlement centres. For convenience, a list of the centres, with the dates on which they opened and closed, is reprinted in Appendix A. About half of those who left the centres did so under their own arrangements, often with the help of our staff, and 8,429 have been resettled by the Board directly in 1,793 houses provided by local authorities and 2,437 in private accommodation. Our records enable us to say to what addresses Uganda Asian families went on arrival in this country or on leaving the Board's resettlement centres. There has since been a certain amount of movement, and the Board do not have the figures of the exact number of Uganda Asians now living in any particular area. But our information is good enough to enable us to report that, although many have gone, against our advice, to areas in which housing is difficult and the social and educational services are under strain, substantially more than a third have been placed by the Board in some 400 areas all over England, Wales and Scotland where they have joined, or have formed, Asian groups to which other families may eventually be added. This contribution to the policy of dispersal, which on national grounds we believe to be desirable, is not inconsiderable.
5. Since the date of the Interim Report we have paid increasing attention to the problems of Uganda Asians living in the community. We were instructed by the Home Secretary to be guided generally by the principle that the needs of the newcomers should be met by the authorities and organizations who are responsible for meeting similar needs among the indigenous population. Our own consideration led us to the conclusion that this policy is right: it would be wrong in principle and damaging to the Uganda Asians themselves to create special permanent machinery for their assistance and by so doing to identify them as a separate section of the communities in which they are living. We have accordingly tried to encourage and help the normal agencies, whether statutory or voluntary, to give whatever support and advice they can to families expelled from Uganda. We describe in Chapter 3 a number of ways in which we have sought to do this.
6. The arrangements, described in the Interim Report, under which Uganda Asians here may be helped to re-emigrate have been continued. By 31 January, 1974 1,028 persons had re-emigrated and a further 198 persons had been accepted for immigration by other countries. In addition, applications by some 49 persons were still being processed by the Embassies and High Commissions concerned. The most popular country for re­emigration was Canada (to which some 4,000 refugees went direct from Uganda) followed by the USA, New Zealand and Sweden.
7. On 13 November, 1972 the Government announced that a charitable trust was to be set up under the chairmanship of  Lord Sainsbury to provide help for Asians expelled from Uganda who were in need, and who could not obtain help from any other source. The intention of the Uganda Asian Relief Trust was to supplement the work of the Resettlement Board, the local authorities and the voluntary organisations who were already active in aiding the newcomers. A letter from the Chairman of the Uganda Asian Relief Trust, describing the work of the Trust, is at Appendix B.
8. We deal in subsequent sections of our report with particular aspects of our work, and in the concluding chapter we try to sum up what has been achieved and what still needs to be done. But we feel that we should at once record our sense of obligation to our own staff, to the staffs of local authorities and Government Departments, and to many voluntary workers and private individuals without whose hard work, enthusiasm and loyalty the operation we were set up to carry through would have been impossible. We are indeed heavily in their debt.

Chapter 1

Administration and Closure of the Remaining Resettlement Centres

9. In our Interim Report we recorded that, at 31 March, 1973, the original 16 resettlement centres set up during the Autumn of 1972 had been reduced to five, with a population of 3,380. We have - for obvious economic reasons - continued the policy of concentrating the diminishing number of residents into a reducing number of centres. Faldingworth was closed in May, 1973, Greenham Common in June, Gaydon in July, Hemswell in October and West Malling in January, 1974. We regretted the disturbance caused by the moves resulting from these closures, but we did all we could to minimise inconvenience, and in one case (Greenham Common) we delayed the closure of a centre until a substantial number of children there had had an opportunity of sitting for their “O” and “A” level examinations in June.
10. We described in our previous report how the centres were run and how greatly we have been helped by Government Departments, local authorities, voluntary bodies and others. The three uniformed organisations - the St John Ambulance, the British Red Cross Society and the WRVS have continued to give us help for so long as it was needed, and the Co-ordinating Committee for the Welfare of Evacuees from Uganda have continued to co-operate with us by appointing liaison officers to co-ordinate the activities of volunteers supplied by the bodies affiliated to them. It is probably no exaggeration to say that never since the war has this country seen voluntary effort extended so willingly, and on such a scale; nor can there be many instances of closer harmony between voluntary and statutory services working together to achieve agreed objectives.
11. We should like also to thank the Variety Club of Great Britain. The Club made generous donations of sports and play equipment, and they were good enough to make available 4 mini-buses to enable residents to be taken out for medical and hospital treatment, to entertainments, and on visits to neighbouring places of interest.
12. We paid particular attention in the centres to the teaching of English and the provision of guidance about British ways of life. Everyone who seemed in need of tuition in English was identified by the Department of Employment officials and the Board's resettlement officers in the course of their normal work. With the encouragement of the Department of Education and Science, the local education authorities readily agreed to provide English language classes for adult residents. The Neighbourhood English Classes, a voluntary organisation, also offered their help and they gave valuable assistance to the education authorities. Some elderly residents were reluctant to attend formal classes with younger people, and women were shy of attending the same classes as men. With the encouragement of teachers and voluntary workers, however, and the formation of family group classes in the residential blocks, these inhibitions were largely overcome; and so, for a substantial number of people, at least some part of their time in the centres has been put to constructive use.
13. With the approach of the school summer holidays the Lindsey and Kent local education authorities were good enough to co-operate with us in providing comprehensive programmes for the children in the centres at Hemswell and West Malling, the cost of which fell on the Board. These programmes included visits to the seaside and places of interest, as well as conventional outdoor and indoor sports and entertainments.
14. The final centre, West Malling, was closed on 15 January, 1974. By then all the remaining families had been moved into accommodation suitable for their needs; so we are glad to be able to report that there will be no need for a permanent or semi-permanent hostel to house any of the refugees from Uganda.

Chapter 2

Movement out of the Centres: The Concluding Phase

15. We continued to follow the policy and procedures described in our Interim Report.  Families were encouraged to move to suitable houses even if jobs had not previously been found for them, provided the area was one in which prospects of early employment were good. We became increasingly concerned at the length of time for which some families had remained in the centres. It was easy for an atmosphere of listlessness to spread, despite the efforts of the many people – voluntary workers as well as officials – who tried to dispel it. So we urged families to move out of the centres in the belief that they could only adapt to, and integrate into, the community by living in it. Although Uganda Asian families are facing difficulties of adjustment (particularly where there are language problems and there is not an existing Asian community) we thought it was better that they should find their feet, even in conditions less than ideal, in a town or village than lose their initiative in the artificial environment of a resettlement centre.
16. During the three months from 1 January to 31 March, 1973, the rate at which persons were moving out of the centres into the community averaged just under 400 a week. We could not hope to maintain this rate of outflow, and in the period from 1 April to 31 January, 1974 the average fell to just under 90 a week. We have already recorded our gratitude to those local authorities and private citizens who were good enough to offer to make accommodation available to Uganda Asians. It was expected that the offers of suitable private accommodation would be taken up fairly rapidly, and that we should be able to look for little further help from that source during the later stages of our work. Unfortunately not all local authorities were able to implement the offers of accommodation they made last year within the period in which we needed it. Of the 2,292 local authority dwellings which had been offered to the Board by 31 March, 1973, only 1,680 had become available by 31 January, 1974. Against this, however, a further 177 houses were offered to us since 31 March. We are especially grateful to the local authorities who, at this late stage in our work, gave us this invaluable help.
17. It was to be expected that, with such a large number of people to be resettled, there would be some who, because of the size of the family, or of age or physical or mental handicaps, would be difficult to place. As we recorded in paragraph 42 of the Interim Report, we arranged for these families and individuals to be specially studied. Most of the larger families (comprising parents with upward of four children) have either been provided with large houses of the older type or accommodation in two neighbouring houses or flats. For older people on their own in the centres we have, wherever possible, found accommodation with Asian families in the community. A few who had formed close friendships with families at the resettlement centres were resettled with those families. Arrangements for some of the elderly who were also infirm and required a degree of specialized care and attention were generously made by several local authority social services departments. With the aid of a social worker seconded to the Board by the Department of Health and Social Security, assessments of 9 physically or mentally handicapped people for whom ordinary accommodation seemed unlikely to be suitable were made by local social workers, doctors and disablement resettlement officers. Wherever possible they have been placed in the community with other Asian families, but in a few cases we had, once more, to look to local authority social services departments for help.

Chapter 3

Support in the Community

18. We mentioned in our last report several ways in which we set about finding out how Uganda Asian families were settling in the community, what local arrangements were being made and what additional help might be needed. First, we encouraged local authorities to take advantage of our ability to reimburse them in full for one year for the cost of additional social workers to aid in resettlement. Twenty-three Departments of Social Services (7 in London boroughs, 3 in counties and 13 in county boroughs) either recruited social workers or community workers themselves or arranged for local Community Relations Councils or other voluntary bodies to do so. (We also made a grant to the London Council of Social Service to enable them to employ, for a period of eight months during 1974, a worker with wide experience of dealing with Uganda Asian families in the centres; his task will be to give special support to a number of families recently resettled in Greater London). Second, the Community Relations Commission obtained from community relations officers an assessment of the way in which families in their predominantly urban areas were settling. Third, the WRVS were good enough to undertake to arrange for visits to be paid to over 1,300 families in areas which are relatively remote from places where a significant number of other Asians are living. In addition, we have studied reports from other voluntary bodies and have ourselves kept in personal contact with authorities in areas of special difficulty.
19. The information thus available to us leaves no doubt that some Asian families are facing considerable problems. Families who did not follow the advice given to them at the airports and resettlement centres to avoid areas already under stress are finding it difficult to secure satisfactory accommodation at rents which they can afford. In some cases landlords are refusing to make rent books available, thus depriving tenants of their guarantee of a fair rent as well as other benefits; and all too frequently tenants are refusing to seek a legal remedy, for fear of the kind of intimidation or harrassment that might render them homeless. Some families who had gone hurriedly to live with friends or relations are living in conditions of gross overcrowding, with severe marital stress. Their problems are greatly magnified where the head of the family has little or no English, and is experiencing difficulty in finding a suitable job.
20. The majority of families visited by the WRVS were found to be happily settled, but it was remarked that even families placed by the Board in good accommodation needed help with the business of living in an unfamiliar country. In the case of a relatively small number of families a combination of circumstances - lack of suitable employment, relative isolation, absence of support from their own communities, and sometimes the difficulty of obtaining permanent housing - has led to some drift away from the areas where the families were originally settled towards established Asian communities in Leicester, London and elsewhere. More generally, however, the WRVS sum up their impressions of their visits as follows: "Most families settle well, once the breadwinners are suitably employed. There is no doubt, however, that in many areas there will be a continuing need for understanding, sympathy and friendship for some time. The WRVS are continuing to pay visits to those families who are still in need of help”.
21. From the start we have done our best to deal with this need for support and to encourage the Uganda Asians to make use of the normal health, social security and education systems, and of the facilities offered by the Department of Employment. At the airports and in resettlement centres we made available a leaflet in Gujarati and English which dealt in broad terms with life in this country. More recently we distributed a translation in Gujarati of a leaflet issued by the Department of Health and Social Security which explained the citizen's entitlement to welfare benefits and the way in which an appeal could be lodged against the decision of a local officer of the Supplementary Benefits Commission. Other leaflets, similarly translated, explained the facilities provided by the employment service including occupational guidance, industrial rehabilitation and training, and the provision of family incomes supplement.
22. Explanatory material of this kind no doubt serves a useful purpose, but we concluded that more action on our part was required in the interests of Uganda Asian families in the community. We record in the following paragraphs some further steps that we have taken.
23. There was evidence that some of those who were trying to help locally were themselves inadequately qualified to explain the working of our social security system, with the result that some families were failing to claim their full entitlement to welfare benefits or to exercise their rights of appeal. Accordingly, in consultation with the Supplementary Benefits Commission and the Department of Employment, the Board and the Community Relations Commission jointly sponsored two-day courses for community relations officers, assistant community relations officers and other workers involved with the resettlement of Uganda Asians to help them to give informed advice and, where necessary, to take up individual cases with the local officers of the Supplementary Benefits Commission. The courses, which included talks about social security benefits (covering special aspects such as exceptional needs payments and the wage-stop), the employment service and industrial training were held in London, Birmingham and Manchester during July 1973. The Supplementary Benefits Commission agreed at the same time to remind the staff of their local offices that community relations officers, acting on behalf of Uganda Asian claimants, should be dealt with on a professional and confidential basis.
24. For many families who chose to make their own arrangements, resettlement in any real sense can only begin when they are adequately housed. Some have been able to obtain mortgages, either from the local authority or a building society, to buy their own houses; and some local authorities already have arrangements in hand for rehousing families who are living in overcrowded conditions in their areas. But for others there is a need for local advice, such as that provided in some areas by housing advice centres. We have accordingly been glad to involve ourselves indirectly in three attempts to help Asian families living in conditions of severe overcrowding:

(i) We made a grant to the Co-ordinating Committee for the Welfare of Evacuees from Uganda to meet the cost, for one year from April 1973, of an officer working in a special unit attached to the Shelter Housing Aid Centre-a joint venture undertaken by Shelter and the Catholic Housing Aid Society-to advise Uganda Asian families. The cost of a second officer is being met by the British Council of Churches. The object is to link families facing housing problems with areas where there are known to be both accommodation and employment.

(ii) After discussions with the Board about various possible ways of alleviating the more acute housing problems, Oxfam generously decided to make a grant of £5,000 to the Shelter Housing Aid Centre for an allied scheme under which families in the Greater London area would be helped to move out to areas where the pressure on accommodation is less severe. The Centre hope to acquire for such families short-life properties, with a minimum of three years use, in areas where access to local authority housing should be available within a reasonable period of time; and they intend to arrange for these houses to be managed and owned by local housing associations.

(iii) The Board also agreed to finance a Shelter Housing Aid Centre experimental scheme, to run for six months, to advise families living in the London Borough of Ealing about housing and job prospects in other parts of the country.

25. It has been easier to find work for Uganda Asians than to house them satisfactorily. The Department of Employment estimates that some 85 per cent of those who registered for employment have been placed in or have individuals in hundreds of areas where their prospects are good - and to ensure that the support they still require will be given them by those agencies which already exist to provide it. There is ample evidence that the vast majority of these new citizens are settling down and beginning with determination - and in many cases success - to make a new life. Many of them still need help. But they are learning - and learning fast - how to look after themselves.

CHAPTER 4

Costs

26. From the date of the Board's appointment in August, 1972, up to 31 December, 1973, £6.1 million has been spent directly by the Board on the reception and resettlement of Uganda Asians. There is a summary of this expenditure in Appendix D. A small amount of additional expenditure, particularly in connection with resettlement centres, remains to be met; and local authorities have still to claim grant in respect of expenditure incurred between the beginning of this financial year and August, 1974. Expenditure incurred by other Departments in assisting Uganda Asians through their normal services cannot be separately identified.
27. The expenses of reception, £79,000, include, in addition to the cost of the reception arrangements at four airports, payments totalling £61,700 for the clearance and transport of personal belongings of Uganda Asians from docks and airports.
28. By far the largest single element in the Board's expenditure has been the cost of the setting up and running of resettlement centres. Of the total of £4,904,100, initial works services and the provision of furniture and stores accounted for about £1,500,000. A proportion of this expenditure will be offset by credits arising from disposals of furniture, stores etc. which are still proceeding.
29. General transport expenses in connection with the movement of Uganda Asians from airports by rail and road, and transfers between centres to facilitate closures, amounted to £62,200.
30. The expenses of voluntary bodies reimbursed by the Board, totaling £64,000, consisted mainly of travelling and subsistence payments to volunteers. In some cases, however, contributions were made for additional administrative expenses and for the costs of extra posts to provide such special services as education counselling and advice on housing problems. It is of course impossible to estimate the value of the immense amount of voluntary effort devoted to the reception, resettlement and support of the Uganda Asian families who came to this country.
31. The total cost of the arrangements for helping Uganda Asians to re­emigrate has so far amounted to £59,700. It is estimated that further expenditure on the provision of such assistance will amount to about £50,000.
32. The Government gave special financial help to local authorities in the following ways:

(a) They increased the amount of relevant expenditure for rate support grant in 1973-74 by £2 million specifically to meet expenditure of a general nature by local authorities which might not be covered by grants from the Uganda Resettlement Board.

(b) They authorized the Board to reimburse to local authorities:

(i) 100 per Cent of the cost, for one year, of any temporary expenditure incurred directly arising from the arrival of the refugees in their areas. Such expenditure included refurbishing temporary accommodation, hiring rooms and school transport.

(ii) 100 per cent of the cost for one year of extra staff (such as social workers) employed by the local authorities to deal with the immediate problems resulting from the arrival of the refugees.

(ii) 1100 per cent of the cost of all student awards made by Local Education Authorities to Uganda Asian students for the academic year 1972 -73.

(ii) 75 per cent of the cost of capital projects, such as temporary school classrooms, needed to cater for the needs of the Uganda Asian children.

33. Following consultation with the local authority associations it was decided that these temporary arrangements should be tapered off; they will - except in the case of certain educational expenditure - come to an end on 16 July, 1974. Because certain capital projects for extra school accommodation would not be available for use before the beginning of the academic year 1973-74, we were authorized to reimburse the running costs of these projects up to 31 August, 1974.
34. Grants paid to local authorities, which amounted to £610,000 at 31 December, 1973, relate mainly to expenditure incurred in the financial year 1972-73; they include, in some cases, payments for the temporary provision of educational and medical facilities in the resettlement centres. It is estimated that further grants to local authorities, covering the period up to the termination of such grants in August, 1974, will be of the order of £700,000.
35. The Home Office will assume responsibility for meeting outstanding financial liabilities after the Board ceases to exist.

CHAPTER 5

Conclusion

36. It is understandable-and proper-that the Board should, at the end of its life, have taken stock of its work and tried to assess the results. It may be helpful therefore in this final section of our report to sum up our impressions.
37. What we were set up to do was quickly seen to fall broadly into four distinct though overlapping parts. First, we had to arrange for the families so abruptly expelled from the country in which they had made their homes to be met and counselled on arrival and given such immediate help as they required. We have described in our Interim Report how we set about this. That this part of the operation went well - on the whole ­ was due entirely to our success in borrowing and recruiting, in the first weeks of our existence, a nucleus of competent and enthusiastic staff and in establishing with voluntary bodies, local authorities, Government Departments and the Health Service a close working relationship and an identity of aim which enabled us to draw massively on their resources. We would have been glad of more time to organise the reception arrangements more meticulously in advance. As it was we had to learn as we went along; but for any marginal benefit we might have got at the beginning of the airlift by more careful preliminary planning we could well have had to pay in a loss of enthusiasm - and indeed excitement - which saw us through. About the reception arrangements, therefore, we have no regrets.
38. The second main part of our work was to organise resettlement centres in which families who were unable to make their own arrangements could be temporarily accommodated, This task was made very difficult by the fact that we did not know how many people would be coming, when they would arrive, what proportion of them we would have to put up or for what period we would, in any particular case, have to do so. It was something of an achievement - for which again we are indebted to our own stall, to Departments, local authorities and volunteers - that between 18 September, when the first flight of refugees arrived (less than a month after we were appointed), and 8 November, which was President Amin's deadline, we were able, in 16 hastily improvised reception centres, to provide temporary quarters, food and education, health and other services for some 22,000 people.
39. The third main task was to provide help and advice and-more important-houses for people who had come into the resettlement centres. We were fortunate in being able to recruit resettlement staff of the right quality and to have the ready help in the centres of the Department of Health and Social Security and the Department of Employment. These Departments provided the refugees with the financial help many of them needed to supplement the board and lodging with which we provided them, and assesed their employment capability and helped them to find jobs. By far the greatest difficulty lay in providing houses. We have already explained that about half of those who used the resettlement centres made their own arrangements to leave. But we were able ourselves to find homes - provided by local authorities or by private individuals - for the remaining 11,000. These homes are scattered over several hundred areas in England, Scotland and Wales in which the conditions of stress found in parts of London and the Midlands, to which many Uganda Asians chose to go, do not exist. We believe that we have, in this way, not only given a start to the new life these families have to make in the United Kingdom but have contributed substantially to the implementation of the dispersal policy we adopted. We would, of course, have liked to see a higher proportion of the Uganda Asians going to areas other than London and the Midlands. But it was apparent from the start that existing ties with Asians would pull many people to them; and we have been encouraged by the efforts which most of the authorities concerned have made - in spite of their existing difficulties - to help the refugees and make them feel at home.
40. Looking back, it is evident that our policy of dispersal would have had greater success had we been able to offer the Uganda Asians, immediately or very soon after their arrival, housing accommodation outside the areas of stress; and if we had subsequently been able to provide facilities to buy houses or to start businesses outside these areas. But it inevitably took time to build up a stock of houses and we were able to draw on it only as accommodation became vacant. In the meantime some families in the centres grew tired of waiting for houses and decided to settle themselves, aided by established Asian community networks, in areas where a number of Asian families were already living, and where employment within the Asian community was not hard to find. Special arrangements for loans or financial guarantees to help Uganda Asians to buy houses or to start businesses which might have served as a support for the dispersal policy ­ proved not to be possible. We hope, however, that we have at least provided a large number of new dispersal points and that other families may be persuaded to move to them as they experience the strain of life in places to which we counselled them not to go.
41. The fourth area of our work, concerning families in the community, was the most difficult. We have never deluded ourselves that to place a family in accommodation in the community, or to find jobs for those of its members who want them, is to resettle it. Too often the accommodation which Asian families have found for themselves or which we have gratefully accepted on their behalf from private owners is temporary. In many cases it may be over-crowded; so permanent housing will, sooner or later, be needed by many of these families. Even families who have been placed in good local authority houses by the Board will doubtless often want, as they put down their roots in this country, to buy their own property. Many jobs, as we have already pointed out, are below the job holder's capability and he will naturally want to better himself as soon as he can. Many families - perhaps most - are unfamiliar with conditions in this country and have still a lot to learn about how to live here with satisfaction and how best to use our educational and social services, which are so different from those to which they have been accustomed. They are learning fast. But they still need help.
42. Basically the problems of these families, although they did not come here of their own choice and in many cases arrived penniless, are the same problems as are being faced by large numbers of other people - problems of over-crowding, of stresses of all sorts, of social and economic need. The Board was, therefore, in full agreement with the Home Secretary's directive to it to use the normal agencies in dealing with them. Not only do these agencies exist for tackling such problems and have power to do so; the use of special permanent machinery set up to deal specifically with the Uganda Asians would have differentiated them unacceptably from other people and have been detrimental to their own interests. We have, therefore, as this Report explains, tried by persuasion, stimulation and practical and financial help to ensure that the appropriate agencies – statutory and voluntary – are alive to the special needs of the Ugandan Asians which result from the circumstances in which they came here, and that they take these into account in providing help of the sort which they are authorized and able to give to anyone. We believe that they are fully conscious of the addition to their normal obligations which has been made by the Uganda Asians and that they will do all they can to discharge it.
43. We have been asked – we have indeed asked ourselves – whether the resources available to these normal agencies are sufficient to enable them to meet the requirements of the Uganda Asians effectively. This seems to us to be part of the much wider question whether in all cases the resources of the agencies who are coping with the similar needs of immigrants or indigenous families are adequate. That wider question is hardly for us to answer. What we can say from our own experience of dealing with Uganda Asian refugees is that the paramount needs are housing – which is a need felt not only by those who are new in this country – and, in the case of new arrivals, support and counsel until familiarity with the British way of life has been acquired. In exploring both of these areas we have found immense goodwill; but in both, although the help we have had is generous, demand is still a long way from being matched by supply.

Appendix A

Resettlement Centres

Centre	Date of Opening	Date of Closing (Note A)	Capacity (Note B)
Kensington	6 September, 1972	23 February, 1973	250
Stradishall	18 September, 1972	24 March, 1973	2,000 / 1,500
Hemswell	28 September, 1972	5 October, 1973	1,150 / 950
Houndstone	30 September, 1972	16 February, 1973	950
Greenham Common	1 October, 1972	30 June, 1973	1,600 / 1,400
West Malling	4 October, 1972	15 January, 1974	840
Tonfanau	7 October, 1972	28 February, 1973	1400
Heathfield	9 October, 1972	2 February, 1973	1,200 / 1,100
Faldingworth	11 October, 1972	15 May, 1973	685
Lingfield	13 October, 1972	15 January, 1973	950
Plasterdown	15 October, 1972	13 December, 1972	800
Maresfield	17 October, 1972	28 February, 1973	650
Piddlehinton	19 October, 1972	24 November, 1972	500 / 400
Doniford	23 October, 1972	19 March, 1973	1,225 / 1,125
Raleigh Hall	27 October, 1972	20 January, 1973	430
Gaydon	28 October, 1972	16 July, 1973	830

Note A: The dates of closure shown in this column represent the dates on which the last residents left.

Note B: Where two figures are quoted in this column the first represents the initial capacity and the second that adopted after review, in light of experience.

Appendix B

LETTER FROM THE CHAIRMAN OF THE UGANDA ASIAN RELIEF TRUST
UGANDA ASIAN RELIEF TRUST
Riverwalk House Millbank London SWIP 4RS

31 December 1973
Sir Charles Cunningham, KCB, KBE, CVO
Chairman, Uganda Resettlement Board,
Riverwalk House, Millbank, London, SWIP 4RS

Dear Sir Charles,

I understand that the Uganda Resettlement Board is about to present its final report to the Home Secretary. This may, therefore, be a useful time for me to summarise the work of the Uganda Asian Relief Trust so far.

We shall, of course, soon be reporting fully on our operations, but you will perhaps be interested to know that, since we were set up on 13 November, 1972, we have been able to collect some £120,000; this includes the Government's original donation of £50,000. We recognised early on that, with the small staff at our disposal, we should ourselves be unable to administer such grants as we were able to make. We were fortunate, therefore, in being able to obtain the services of local authorities to act, without charge, as our agents in the field. To the authorities which, according to the Board’s statistics, had received a substantial number of Uganda Asians we gave discretion to make grants within very strictly specified limits; these were subsequently reimbursed so that, when cases of need arose, they could be dealt with expeditiously; of course, as our reserves became smaller we had to withdraw this discretion from authorities which had not needed to make grants to the total amount of the limits we had set them. Other authorities who had only received perhaps one or two families into their area were encouraged to contact our office, when our officers were able to agree the amount of grants over the telephone. In this way we think that we have been successful in meeting most of the needs which have come to our notice efficiently and speedily.

With the amount of money we had available (which represents less than £5 per head of all the United Kingdom passport-holders expelled by General Amin) we were unable to make a large grant to any family. We could not, for instance, expect completely to furnish houses, nor could we give grants for obtaining property or commencing business (indeed both of these last two types of grant were virtually ruled out by our Trust Deed, which only allowed us to make grants of £50 under either head). What we hope we have been able to do, however, is to relieve some of the immediate problems encountered by Uganda Asian families when they moved into the community. We have seen our role as being a ‘gap filling’ one, and we have tried to ensure that grants have been made only in cases of real need, and that they have supplemented and not duplicated those available from statutory or voluntary sources. Apart from two large grants-one to assist post-graduates who fell outside the arrangements made by the Department of Education and Science, and another to assist a family of deaf and dumb children to obtain education at the Royal School for the Deaf-the vast majority of the grants which we have made have gone to individual families who have, on average, received about £50 per family for such things as carpeting, curtains, heaters, clothes, the tools of a man's trade, kitchen and household utensils, soft furnishings, etc., all the one hundred and one things which people in this country take for granted but which these poor people had to leave behind them in Uganda.

So far we have spent some £113,700 and, although it is very difficult to quantify, our estimate would be that in this way we have been able to help some 13,000 people. It is our expectation that, by the time the money available to us has all been spent, which will probably be some time early in 1974, we shall have been able to help a total of some 14,000 people.

By making grants in the way I have indicated the Trustees and I hope that we have been able to supplement the work of the Board by making the entry of the Uganda Asians who went direct from the Airports, or from the Centres, into the community a little easier that it would otherwise have been. We hope that we can continue to do so as long as our help is needed and funds are available.

In conclusion, I should like to thank the Resettlement Board for providing the Trust with its office accommodation and staff. This, together with the help so generously given by local authorities, has enabled us to use the whole of our funds for the purposes for which they were donated. We are glad also to acknowledge the close and friendly co-operation which has existed throughout between the staff of the Trust and that of the Board. Without it we could not have achieved as much as we have.

Yours sincerely,
SAINSBURY
Chairman
Uganda Asian Relief Trust

Appendix C

AREAS TO WHICH UGANDA ASIANS HAVE BEEN RESETTLED FROM CENTRES AT 31 JANUARY 1974

	Families
Region	Private Accomodation	Local Authority Accomodation
Northern ……………..	9	86
Yorkshire ……………..	54	173
East Midlands .………	51	121
Scotland ……………..	13	190
Wales ……………..	12	75
South West ……………	129	171
South East ………………	229	332
East Anglia ………………	24	77
West Midlands ……………	60	173
North West ………………..	56	215
Greater London ……………	214	180
Total … … … … … …	851	1,793

Note: Regions have been defined as usual Economic Planning Regions with the following exceptions:
Yorkshire – all of Yorkshire.
East Midlands – East Midlands, including all of Derbyshire and the whole of Lincolnshire.
North West – North West less High Peak area of Derbyshire.
Northern – Northern less North Riding of Yorkshire.

Appendix D

SUMMARY OF NET EXPENDITURE TO 31 DECEMBER 1973

Administrative Expenses of the Boards	347,000
Expenses of Reception	79,700
Resettlement Centres	4,904,100
General Transport Expenses	62,000
Expenses of Voluntary Bodies	64,000
Assistance with Re-emigration	59,700
Grants to Local Authorities	610,000
TOTAL	6,126,700