Europia update their web site (and us).

Our friends at Europia have relaunched their web site and provided the following updates this week.

Coronovirus Info in different languages
Europia have relaunched their website. There is some useful written and video information on coronavirus in different European languages. Check it out at https://europia.org.uk/covid-19/

Simplified Referrals
They have developed a simplified referral process for anyone needing to refer someone to CABB/Europia Immigration and EUSS services. Please use the attached form and send and send it to officerteam@cabb.org.uk. Clients can still phone direct on 0300 330 9071.

Service Survey
Europia have just come to the end of their 1st year of funding for the EUSS project and would like to collect your views on the service they have provided up to know. They would be really grateful if you could respond to the short survey below – it shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes. If you could also encourage your team members to fill it in that would be fantastic – Thanks in advance https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/XXPSLNR

Home Office Guidance on NRPF
They have attached a copy of recent Home Office case worker guidance on NRTF which is useful. If you have anyone in this position who needs to apply to lift the NRPF restrictions to avoid destitution please get in touch via the referrals form.

Home Affairs Select Committee
Finally there was a Home Affairs select committee on Tuesday in which Colin Yeo of Free Movement, Adrian Berry of the ILPA and others did a great job in advocating for a Statutory Instrument to clarify various measures relating to immigration in the context of the effects of the COVID-19 Crisis on people subject to immigration control. Let’s hope their interventions achieve the desired affect. Watch this space for any emerging info.

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Friday On My Mind.

The agenda for this Friday’s GMWRAG meetings in Bury is now available for download. Please note that this is the agenda for both meetings i.e. the GMWRAG GM UC Forum meeting in the morning and the GMWRAG meeting itself in the afternoon. The agenda is of course a movable feast so if you have any agenda items you’d like to add for a.m. or p.m. please contact our host as per the agenda.

A quick reminder that our guest speaker will be Jane Crawford, Training, Advice and  Information Manager from our friends at Housing Systems and the subject will be “UC and turning Pension Age. What’s going wrong? And what can we do about it?”.

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Speaker announced for the Bury/Bolton GMWRAG meeting.

Following on from our recent announcement of the first GMWRAG foray into the wilds of Bury for decades we’re pleased to confirm our speaker and subject matter. The final agenda should be with you on Monday the 24th of February 2020. The meeting(s) for those of you pathologically incapable of clicking on a link or browsing the recent entries on this site are of course this coming Friday, the 28th of February 2020.

Our guest speaker will be Jane Crawford, Training, Advice and  Information Manager from our friends at Housing Systems and the subject will be “UC and turning Pension Age. What’s going wrong? And what can we do about it?”.

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To boldly go where no man has gone before (ish!)! Yes, it’s a GMWRAG meeting and a GMWRAG GM UC Forum.

GMWRAG is pleased to announce the venue for our next a.m. GMWRAG GM UC Forum and p.m. GMWRAG meeting.

Now, you might not unreasonably have concluded from that heading that, yes, we’ve abandoned Bolton and we’re going to torture you with Oldham in January once again but, no, you’d be wrong.

We have been unable to find a suitable venue in Bolton but we’ve been pleasantly surprised to find that we can in fact return to a part of GM where GMWRAG, if not exactly a stranger, certainly hasn’t been seen since at least 1997. Indeed our current minutes page sadly shows not a single entry for… (small fanfare played by people currently fighting the windy weather in order to stand upright)… Bury.

Yes, you read that right. GMWRAG is going to Bury.

Now, somewhere under the “GMWRAG desk” there are boxes of “things” yet to be scanned and uploaded to this site. We’re sure that amongst them we will find (and no doubt go all misty eyed about) the minutes from our last visit to Bury. We’re fairly confident it was the mid-1990s though and Andrew Grealey would have been Principal Officer (Welfare Rights) with Don Williams lurking to one side.

So, anyway, the next GMWRAG GM UC Forum will take place at Citizens Advice Bury with a 9:30am cocktails networking/refreshments for 10:00am start. We’ll aim for a 12:30pm finish.

The p.m. only GMWRAG meeting will open at 1:30pm for cocktails networking/refreshments for a 2:00pm start and a 4:00pm finish.

Please note that the address for the day is

Citizens Advice Bury and Bolton
St Johns House, 155-163 The Rock
Manchester BL9 0ND

Although it says Manchester we think (and the post code suggests) it is very much in Bury (and most definitely not in Bolton).

Our (shivering) man in the north suggests that “Walking from central Bury you will pass the Wilko store on your left, continue towards the junction and we will be on your left in front of the Viet Village restaurant.”.

Our man in the north completely forgot to tell us which way you actually walk from central Bury or that there’s 10 Wilko’s in Bury but more than 20 years after our last visit we’re confident that modern developments like post codes; sat nav; Google Maps (and even Apple Maps) will get you there. Since we were last there they’ve also invented buses and trams (possibly).

So, no excuses, in line with our recent tendency to geographical waywardness the Bolton GMWRAG will most definitely be in Bury and, er, we forgot the date didn’t we…

Ahem, this will all take place fairly quickly on Friday the 28th of February 2020.

As yet we have no speaker confirmed for the p.m. meeting but agenda for both meetings will be published as soon as we can.

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Europe comes to Bury.

Europe. Remember “them”? Europia does and in unsettling times they’re busy running sessions on the European Settlement Scheme. The latest of these sessions will be at Citizens Advice Bury and Bolton. This is an open session, which we think means that no appointments are required, and it will take place on Wednesday the 12th of February 2020 between 10:00am – 12:00pm. The Bureau address is 155-163 The Rock, Bury BL9 0ND. GMWRAG was highly amused when we were asked to publicise this session to see the address suffixed with “UK”. It did occur to us that if you were going to run such sessions outside of the UK…

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