Since September, there have been continual massive delays in the passing on of tenants requests for repairs from Migrant Help to Mears, which Migrant Help puts down to teething problems and high demand. Picture: Mears Scotland promotional photo, Willie Docherty is standing, on the left. T: +61 (0)2 9964 9733 F: +61 (0)2 9964 9924 Mears also sees the overlap between its housing and care businesses as a good selling point looking to capitalise on an ageing population. Social housing specialist Mears Group PLC has been handed contracts worth 1bn from the UK government - a sizeable deal for a company with market capitalisation of less than 400mln. While those seeking asylum have no choice over where in the UK they are dispersed to, we take great pride in the fact that so many refugees chose to settle here once their claim for asylum is determined. 14 Robertson Road, Easton, Bristol, BS5 6JY The contract started in January 2011, as a partnership deal between the council and a company called Morrison Facilities Services Ltd, a subsidiary of Anglian Water. We have a dedicated team of Local Authority Asylum Seeker Liaison Officers (LAASLOs) who can support you during the asylum process. Miles is a long-term Mears manager. I have been forced to stay put until Mears carried out the repairs in accordance with the legal settlement. The following voluntary sector organisations may be able to offer short term support while you consider your options. Overview. Do you have information about Mears youd like to share with us? Houston, TX In the North East, Yorkshire and the Humber this contract is held by Mears. Rosebush, MI Mears staff and NHS staff also eat the food in the hotels along with residents. You can report issues to us here, Address:Innova HouseInnova ParkKinetic CrescentEnfieldLondonEN3 7XH. 407-839-1570. Roy Irwin was the Chief Inspector for housing of the Audit Commission, the official body which audited local councils finances until it was scrapped in 2012, with its functions privatised. Call Freephone: 0800 170 7008 or email: housingadvicecentre@newcastle.gov.uk. Orlando Airport and Attraction Shuttle Reservations. Mears also offers a range of management services to other landlords, such as income management (i.e., rent collection), and emergency accommodation. The bread and butter business is winning council and housing association contracts for maintenance and repair work. It is important that you seek specialist, professional advice from an organisation who can advise you on this such as: Newcastle Law Centre Mears Housing Management is a successful business within Mears Group PLC, having grown in 5 years to a nationally based . He ran Mears social housing division and was chief operations officer, before rising to CEO in 2010. Hello Boglarka They may also be used to limit the number of times you see an advertisement and measure the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. Most of the rest, 194 million, were made up of goodwill. It has been like that for at least two months.. This is under the control of the Home Office and the UK Visas and Immigration department who decide who can legally reside in the UK. Corporate Watch Alternatively, you can contact our Customer Success team using the Contact Us form on the page. Mears has 6,500 employees and a footprint across the country. For more details visit www.breathe-cleanair.com. Careers. Moreover, Mears understands the importance of supporting each person whilst living in its accommodation and to ensure that as a company it works with the communities in which it delivers services. San Ramon, CA Of course, this personally benefited many local politicians and managers who moved into well-paid private sector jobs. Mears Group has moved around 500 asylum seekers into city hotels, claiming that it was a necessary measure because of problems securing lets during the lockdown. I could not afford the move as I already paid over 7000 of my student loan to Mears as rent. As part of the Mears Group we offer partnership solutions and expertise in estate management and property maintenance. She is former Chief Executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust and also now a director of Yorkshire Water. Outside the properties there were piles of rubbish near the street entrance. Telephone: 0808 801 0503. Terry, a design manager speaking fluent English, told me of his concerns about everyday life in the hotels. They complain that the contracts with Mears are less favourable than the previous ones with G4S, giving them fewer rights and paying them less, which is one reason Mears have been able to procure only a few new properties in South Yorkshire, with none of the large landlords with many properties signing. If Mears does face financial difficulties in coming years and is unable to pay out the dividends its shareholders have become accustomed to, expect more disagreements between management and shareholders. Back News; Subscribe. Other areas where complaints about Mears have made the news for the wrong reasons include the London boroughs of Walthamstow and Islington, where they work for Family Mosaic housing association (now part of Peabody Group), and also Cornwall. As a result, while a company may be acting primarily in the interests of its shareholders, responsibility for its actions is difficult to lay at the door of any one shraeholder. To help us improve GOV.UK, wed like to know more about your visit today. One notable point: from September 2012 until 2016, Sercos Scottish asylum housing was largely sub-contracted to another scandal-hit company, Orchard & Shipman. Mears paid out 12 million in 2017, up from 11 million the year before. We have a formal complaints process which aims to make sure all formal complaints are recorded, investigated and responded to fairly and in a timely manner. Many home care companies are facing severe financial difficulties, with market leader Allied Healthcare recently at the brink of going under. I have been living in hotels since 8 October 2019, he told me. In Sheffield, in October, I visited a family with a 7-year-old daughter, who had reported a boiler failure back in August, when Mears was taking over their house. And I can prove that beyond any doubt. McCabe did take gifts of dinners, whiskey and chocolates from Mears, but these were legally declared on the councils website. According to local press, Mears agreed to end the contract after heavy criticism about its council housing repairs and maintenance work. We have a local group in E16 representing Mears tenants who feel conned and let down by this company. Mears Group plc is a housing and social care provider. Tel: 0191 2737961www.redcross.org.uk. A court case challenging the evictions is currently in progress. Please consider supporting our research and analysis by making a donation. Huntersville, NC additional documentation. contract to provide asylum seeker housing, Blurring the boundaries between private and social, : Milton Keynes regeneration, Brighton overcharging, Scottish corruption allegations, Stroud repairs, Apprenticeships, Industrial disputes, Beards. Carrollton, TX They move us regularly. Telephone: 020 7346 1134 At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020 Mears moved about 350 asylum seekers from flats into hotels as a "temporary measure". This included compulsory tendering rules that forced authorities to hire low-cost contractors who undercut their in-house teams. In October a letter to then Home Office minister Victoria Atkins, signed by more than 100charities, warned that the new repairs reporting and advice system was causing needless suffering among those it is meant to protect, and called on the government to take urgent action to address the situation. G4S lost all its asylum housing contracts in 2019 after a sustained campaign over six years by asylum tenants with the courage to complain and challenge the international security company as their landlord. Mears is a public limited company (PLC), meaning its shares can be bought and sold on the London Stock Exchange. Flexible and commission-free service at competitive rates. So can Mears confidently expect the acquired businesses to bring in profits to justify the current valuations? But there may also be something more. Our customer contact centre is open 24/7 and can deal with all your initial enquiries or put you in touch with the right person to help. These officers will support the move on process if you are granted refugee status and will offer advice and signposting if you receive a negative decision on your asylum claim. Like G4S, Serco, Capita and other well-known outsourcing corporations, Mears Group has grown from the ongoing privatisation of public services. At half past midnight on Christmas eve, Ruth, an asylum seeking mother with a 3-year-old child, rang me. So, what next for Mears? Mears strategy involves networking across the blurring boundaries of high finance and charitable housing provision. According to its published accounts, the new activities in its housing and care businesses have not been funded by taking on lots of extra debt. Added to this, Mears like Serco and the rest does not own a vast array of tangible assets such as buildings, land or equipment that it could sell or rent out in the event it needed to raise cash (but see the housing section, above, for details of Mears current attempts to change that). Placemaking also involves: blurring of the boundaries around social, affordable and private rented housing. Email:feedback.mearsliving@mearsgroup.co.uk. You cant just put them in the house and say get on with it like an average council tenant., Hundreds of asylum seekers in hotels in West Yorkshire. All of which could be very profitable for Mears and other private sector partners. When you receive your notification please get in touch with the LAASLO team who will work with the Refugee Move on Team at Your Homes Newcastle, to help you to: Your housing provider may already have referred you into the LAASLO Team and someone from the team may contact you. Even with infamously low wages being paid to staff, many contracts do not pay enough for companies to break even. I would like to thank all those individuals, in particular Terry, who gave their time and testimonies to jointly create this piece. Right now a window has burst open in the middle of night and we cant close it as it was held shut for 8 years by 1 nail only. The other day I think it was the Council who came and they saw the house and the toilet and other problems. In Yorkshire and the North East, Mears is replacing G4S whose asylum housing has been notorious for squalor, infestations, and scandal when racist vigilantes attacked homes whose doors had been painted an identical red colour. Registered Office: Innova House, Innova Park, Kinetic Crescent, Enfield, London EN3 7XH. I visited two of the houses where, despite the fact that communal areas were really dirty, there was no evidence of recent cleaning (the visitation log mentioned cleaning on 8 October 2019). For welfare rights and money advice please visitWelfare Rights. Mears will release its results for 2018 in March. Park Inn: What do we know about asylum hotel at centre of Glasgow attack? The Local Authority is not responsible for placing or accommodating asylum seekers. Mears Group recognise our people as our greatest asset. People who work in the hotels are often really rude to us. The idea is that the acquired companies will in time generate wealth equivalent to the purchase price, so that should be recognised in the accounts. He then moved to Mears in 2013. At the end of 2017, Omega managed around 1,000 properties, and Plexus over 1,700. Newcastle upon Tyne Mears shared are listed on the London Stock Exchange. The pots in the kitchen are rusty how can she be expected to use these? Today on the protest there were people stuck in these conditions for 5 months the Home Office contract says that Mears should keep people in Urban House only for a few weeks. These items allow the website to remember choices you make (such as your user name, language, or the region you are in) and provide enhanced, more personal features. At Quanta its not a job its a career. But there is no evidence of any illegal wrongdoing. According to the union, workers at Manchester Mears and Manchester Working (a joint venture with the council) were being paid up to 3,500 less than colleagues for undertaking the same work. I was really worried. But maintenance margins are tight. Without this, the overall worth of the company according to its accounts would drop from 210 million to just 15 million. Still, his 443,000 was more than 20 times the average Mears employees salary of 21,684. Asylum housing tenants simply do not complain, and are often frightened about challenging any official, including their landlord. But it is run privately by a joint venture which is 75% owned by Terraquest. He is well connected in the university world, as a former director of City University and now of the University of London. Mears are responsible for maintencae and repairs. This scenario has been playing out across the UK since September 2019, when three companies - Serco, Clearsprings and the Mears Group - took over the Home Office contract for the provision of asylum housing for asylum seekers awaiting decisions (currently 48,000). The Home Office is responsible for managing the dispersal, accommodation and support needs of asylum seekers while a decision on the asylum claim is made. Mears is the premier provider of engineering, design and construction services to the pipeline and utility industries. All rights reserved. In 2012, Mears bought out Morrison and took over the deal. We had complained there were no toiletries and Mears simply said, You have to get anything extra from charities and the churches. Then they turned round and said we could not allow people from the churches into the hotel. Hotels have become asylum housing. Barnsley Council served an enforcement order on the two properties they had licensed as HMOs, demanding action on cleaning and repairs and giving Mears a time limit. It is based in Gloucestershire, but works all over the UK. It has set up a 30 million fund for this sideline. For all of these, the solution was, of course, Mears, evidenced by .. YourMK. It seems to be all about their bottom line, their profits. Mears current Chief Operating Officer, John Taylor, was previously boss of scandal-hit housing company Orchard & Shipman when that company won the bid to run much of the previous Scottish asylum housing contract under Serco. Read more about our complaints process, here. If you have claimed asylum it is important that you get legal advice and find a solicitor to represent your case as soon as possible, as there are very short deadlines for providing the evidence needed to support your claim for asylum. Last time they sent somebody who said he had come up from near London, Ruth said. We aim to provide excellent customer service, but recognise that sometimes we might fall short of your expectations. We will immediately start work on the Mobilisation so that we are ready to meet the needs of asylum seekers and their host communities., Mears awarded three Asylum Accommodation and Support Contracts. When we investigated Mears in our Home Care Business report two years ago, we found the company appeared, on the whole, to be providing a better service than its for-profit rivals. A spokesperson for Mears, which provides asylum seeker accommodation on behalf of the Home Office, said it is working to reduce the use of hotels "wherever possible". We provide and manage 17,000 homes for local and central Government and are also responsible for keeping 750,000 of all social housing in the UK in good repair. . The Milton Keynes deal is not the first time Mears has had to deal with overcharging allegations, or with whistleblowers. The midwife told Mears that the woman had a serious iron deficiency and suggested food she should eat nothing was done about this by the Mears man. If it is out of hours (after 5.30pm or any time at a weekend) and you have nowhere to sleep please contact: 0191 278 7878 (Ask for the Emergency Homeless Officer). Mears Group is a market-leading housing and care company that provides bespoke services to our clients. The Guardian understands that the private housing provider Mears, which is subcontracted by the Home Office, has moved more than 300 people from mainly self-contained apartments into hotels over . Have been in Mears-managed temporaryaccomodation for 8 years now. Or do you have information on a company that you would like to share? Mears Group. Until the 1980s, social housing was very largely the responsibility of elected Local Authorities. Mears offers car & limo service, airport & cruise transfers in Orlando & worldwide, bus charters in Orlando & select cities, taxi & shuttle services in Orlando. They said they would do something. Next door I was welcomed by two asylum seeking men on their way out, who encouraged me to look around and take pictures. Mears claim to provide rapid response repairs but all they do is avoid responsibility and sparing on repair costs. He then found a home at Mears in 2013, becoming Chairman of its social landlord businesses Omega and Plexus. Mears Group, which is being paid by the Home Office to tend to asylum seekers, denied the claims. 4500 North Mission Road Rosebush, Michigan 48878. This product is licensed from F5 Networks. Grandview, MO This was another HMO with damage and dirt throughout; the kitchen in particular was a health hazard for the tenants. Over the past four months, the combination of these delays and Mears contract performance its failures in terms of the quality, cleanliness and general management of homes have failed tenants. We take anti-social behaviour very seriously. Migrant Help is a national service, funded by UKVI, providing free, independent advice and guidance to asylum seekers to help make claims for support and give general advice about the asylum process. It repairs and maintains over 700,000 social homes across the UK. Please contact the Asylum Teamat asylum@newcastle.gov.uk. NE1 6SQ. I have been in five different hotels. So what sort of company is Mears? Mears home care operations only broke even in 2017. Just 22 million of those were tangible assets. 2020, when 7 Scottish MPs cited "no confidence" in the "evaluation" into the impact of Covid-19 on asylum-seekers, with the group walking out of a meeting with government officials, and supporting calls for a full independent inquiry . But he was also eligible for a bonus on top of his salary of up to 774,000, which would have taken his income well over the million mark. I take them from the cleaners trolley and give to the women. Ruth and the other mothers in a Sheffield Mears mother and toddler asylum house could not get through to Mears to fix their boiler, and faced a cold Christmas day without heating and hot water. To describe its new business approach overall, Mears likes to use a current regeneration buzzword Placemaking. Here the food is not bad sometimes but very small portions. These contracts involve providing housing for thousands of asylum seekers who have been dispersed to those areas by the Home Office while they apply for refugee status. Mears has been awarded contracts for Scotland, Northern Ireland and the North East, Yorkshire and the Humber. Mears rules out controversial policy imposed by previous asylum housing provider Serco Libby Brooks Scotland correspondent Thu 25 Jun 2020 09.46 EDT First published on Thu 25 Jun 2020 09.45 EDT Thank you very much for your comments and for your solidarity with Mears tenants in asylum housing The company agreed to raise and equalise wages after 80 days of strikes. Mears agreed to buy Mitie Property Management, the social housing management wing of outsourcer and detention profiteer Mitie, for 35 million. Ellison Place Mears just missed a target for covering its debts in 2018.i But the company said that was mainly due to cash reserves being lower than planned due to being paid for certain activities slightly later than expected. Migrant Help is a national service, funded by UKVI, providing free, independent advice and guidance to asylum seekers to help make claims for support and give general advice about the asylum process. In 2017 he also joined the board. If you have refugee or humanitarian protection you may be able to apply to have your partner and/or child(ren) join you. The properties here are to be demolished at a later time. Mears do not want to take responsibility for the lack of repairs (in my case it is ceilings falling in, kitchen floor caved in, windows nailed shut, bath rotting) and they offered me another of their overpriced properties only when I started suing them. The same applies to the 94 million Mears currently estimates the housing businesses it has bought to be worth (this may have increased significantly with the purchase of Mities housing division in 2018). one of the UKs biggest maintenance and repairs contractors, Asylum seekers (were) left in houses with no heating. But, at least, providing this service must give it a real familiarity with the planning system and how it works across the country. Later, Morgan said he was suing the Labour Group over the issue. A council investigation found that it had been overcharged by over 500,000 for some 1,000 plastering jobs. Read more about our complaints process, here. Mears is committed to ensuring that asylum accommodation is safe, habitable and fit for purpose and will meet all contractual and regulatory standards. Mears says its care workers are paid above minimum wage and that it is central to our strategy that care workers are properly recognised as the skilled workers they are. Image Library. This storage type usually doesnt collect information that identifies a visitor. Calls are free, open 24/7/365 and accessible to all asylum seekers in the UK. Dripping Springs, TX News stories, speeches, letters and notices, Reports, analysis and official statistics, Data, Freedom of Information releases and corporate reports. These items help the website operator understand how its website performs, how visitors interact with the site, and whether there may be technical issues. . The company employs 12,000 people. Arlington, Texas. Once your account is created, you'll be logged-in to this account. Just what is a profit-seeking company doing running social landlords? Muslim women with the headscarf were really terrified and very afraid for their children.. When you join our team, you join a dynamic culture in which career development is encouraged, excellence is rewarded and diversity is valued. In solidarity In addition, Mears stated in a June 2018 investor presentation that a key priority is to also achieve Registered Provider status in Scotland. This storage is often necessary for the basic functionality of the website. However, there were still instances of appalling care. I have been shocked to read about the plight of asylum -seekers in Mears accomodation& express my solidarity towards them. These items are required to enable basic website functionality. Secondly, the affordable subsidiaries can be used to access public grants: We work with investors to purchase stock where we can secure long leases at affordable rents and can utilise Local Authority funding in addition to leveraging in private institutional funding.. Before joining Mears in 2012, Willie was head of Glasgows arms length company City Building, which was spun-off from the city councils old building services department and became embroiled in scandals over awarding contracts to several Labour Party donors. Call Children's Panel if you're a child in . The landlords had an informal meeting and decided that they would prefer to give notice on their existing leases and get their properties back., Mears are totally incompetent, they claimed. In an investor briefing last year, Mears management said they had decided to turn their focus to bigger deals, particularly from central government: Evolution of business means we are gaining access to opportunities previously out of our reach.. This scenario has been playing out across the UK since September 2019, when three companies Serco, Clearsprings and the Mears Group took over the Home Office contract for the provision of asylum housing for asylum seekers awaiting decisions (currently 48,000). In some cases, for example in Manchester or North Lanarkshire, Mears works through joint venture companies set up together with local authorities. www.mearsgroup.co.uk. Miles 2017 pay included a basic salary of 369,000 plus 55,000 pension contribution and 19,000 taxable benefits. In summer 2017, we completed a 3 million refurbishment project to breathe new life into this lovely listed building, with 409 rooms for you to choose from. (See our 2018 company profile of Mitie here.) I am pretty sure they are starving during the night. I and others researching asylum housing warned the Home Office in 2018 in consultation events that separating off the reporting of repairs from the company that actually did them would slow down the response to repair requests and in emergency cases, create dangerous situations for asylum seeking families and so it proved.