A Home Office Minister has admitted a failure of co-ordination between the Government's asylum and refugee agency and local authorities around the country.

Speaking on BBC Radio's File on 4 programme, the minister responsible for Immigration, Beverley Hughes, said the National Asylum Support Service (NASS) had experienced serious difficulties over the past year.

"There has not been either the right relationship or the right level of communication and joint working between NASS and the local authorities," she said.

"I think it is one of the main things we have to put right."

Lack of co-ordination

In the programme a number of councils complain that public money has been lost because of incompetence and a lack of candour by NASS.

We would get no response, no information, no communication whatsoever

Bill Beaumont, Durham County Council

District authorities in the north east have revealed that they are invoicing NASS for hundreds of thousands of pounds which they say they have spent preparing to house asylum seekers who never arrived.

They claim the arrangements were made after lengthy negotiations with NASS officials who then failed to tell them that their plans had been put on hold.

Durham County Council puts the cost of its preparations at �200,000. Bill Beaumont, who led the negotiations on behalf of the council, says he has now lost all faith.

"We would get no response, no information, no communication whatsoever. There is a great deal of frustration, disappointment and annoyance."

Inflated prices

In the North West, Liverpool City Council says it faces additional costs of up to �10m because private landlords paid by NASS have been buying up properties in run down inner-city areas.

This has inflated prices for the Council which has also been trying to buy up the properties for clearance and re-development.

"At the moment we've got one government department spending money to defeat the programmes of another government department," says Richard Kemp, the councillor in charge of housing policy at Liverpool City Council.

"We could be talking anything up to �10m that the public sector will have to put in to buy up properties instead of what they would otherwise have had to spend."

Reforms

Beverley Hughes has promised to investigate

No one from NASS would be interviewed for the programme but the Immigration Minister, Beverley Hughes, has promised to investigate the complaints.

She said she was implementing a series of reforms which would ensure an improvement in the Agency's performance.

"I would want to see a significant difference in terms of the way we are working over the next six months.

"In a year's time I'd want to be absolutely clear that we were not getting the kind of problem you are raising in the programme today."

File on 4 is broadcast at 8pm on Tuesday 9 July 2002 and repeated on Saturday 13 July 2002 at 5pm on BBC Radio 4