On the frontline: London councils’ responses to the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine

While the UK's response to the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine has placed local authorities at the frontline, a substantive examination of what has gone right, what has gone wrong and what challenges authorities have faced has so far been lacking. Our latest report hopes to shed more light on how the UK's response has unfolded in practice on the ground in London, what this has meant for Ukrainians who have arrived in the UK seeking refuge and what lessons policymakers can take forward in future considerations about the UK's response to similar humanitarian crises. We conducted interviews with Ukraine response teams covering 12 local areas in London, who, as of December 2022, were themselves catering for around 5,300 Ukrainians under the Homes for Ukraine Scheme alone (roughly 36% of all HFU arrivals in the capital).