Community Sponsorship
Community Sponsorship
Communities across the UK have a proud history of providing sanctuary to those feeling conflict and persecution in other countries. Community sponsorship schemes empower local people to help refugee families find safe homes and rebuild their lives in communities across the UK.
The Opportunity of Named Sponsorship
In November 2025, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced the creation of new, safe and legal routes for refugees to resettle in the UK. This includes named community sponsorship, where communities choose who they welcome. Welcoming groups help refugees to navigate the local community, register with local services, learn English, find work, make friends, and rebuild their lives, all supported by the UK Government.
We want to provide sanctuary to those in danger. We want to be a Greater Britain, not a littler England.
Shabana Mahmood, Home Secretary
This is the vision that I have for the system that we want to run, with multiple safe legal routes, community sponsorship being the preferred model.
Shabana Mahmood, Home Secretary
Research from the University of Birmingham found that Community Sponsorship contributes to more outward-looking, open and inclusive communities, and more positive attitudes towards refugees.
Countries like Canada already run community sponsorship schemes at scale which was achieved in part because named community sponsorship hands control to local communities over the resettlement of refugees in their area.
Communities welcome
Since 2016, over 350 communities across the UK have welcomed more than 600 refugees through the Community Sponsorship scheme, as well as many thousands more under the Homes for Ukraine scheme that was established following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
What now?
We want the Government to establish and implement a fully operational Named Sponsorship route by the end of 2026, that gives local communities, civil society, employers and universities the power to choose who to welcome to the UK. Sign your organisation up to join the Named Sponsorship Network or to hear more about what comes next.
Background: Our role in Community Sponsorship so far
At the height of the Syrian refugee crisis in September 2015, following the public outrage at images of Alan Kurdi washed up on the shores of Turkey, we called for the introduction of a sponsorship scheme for refugees. There were a lack of adequate numbers of safe routes to UK. Those that exist are problematic and not built with the needs of refugees in mind. Our solution in this instance was based on the Canadian model of community sponsorship.
Just weeks later, the then Home Secretary, Theresa May, announced that the Home Office would look at the idea. Citizens UK then became one of the leading civil society partners helping the government design and produce the scheme, which was launched in July 2016.
As well as resettling refugees, we have continued to influence national policy. We called on the UK Government to urgently resume resettlement, after it was suspended in March 2020 due to Covid-19. And in December 2020, flights finally resumed. When the Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme ended in 2021, we urged the government to resettle at least 5000 refugees a year. They committed to launching a new UK Resettlement Scheme where newcomers are welcomed by Local Authorities and Community Sponsorship groups.
