Sevenoaks Welcomes Refugees works in close partnership with Sevenoaks Town Council, Sevenoaks District Council, Kent County Council and the support agency Clarion Housing Association, who are commissioned by KCC.
Our mission is to ensure that refugees are truly welcomed into Sevenoaks District. We support their journey to social integration and economic independence by working directly with them and others in providing language training, household goods, social activities and supporting access to public services, employment, education and housing.
Our Constitution document is here.
The first refugee families here are part of the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme (SVPRS). This scheme involves particularly vulnerable refugees coming directly from the Middle East to resettle in the UK. In late 2019 the government amalgamated all its refugee resettlement programmes into one, called the global UK Resettlement Scheme. Refugees resettled under this scheme can be drawn from anywhere in the world, and participating councils can request refugees from cultural backgrounds they are best placed to support.
Sevenoaks Welcomes Refugees is also now playing an active part in the Afghanistan refugee resettlement programme, in which Sevenoaks District Council is participating. But we urgently need to find more private sector landlords/properties.
Please see Ukraine Crisis for the latest updates on our role in helping refugees from Ukraine.
For more information about refugees visit UNHCR and the UK’s Refugee Council.
Tim Williams
Chair
I retired from chartered accountancy at the age of 28 moving, via a masters degree, into the world of international development. For the next decade I worked with a number of international NGOs in Africa and Asia. In 1998 I joined the UK Department for International Development where I worked in Whitehall and in lower and middle-income countries in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, until retiring in 2018.
Since retiring I have kept busy as a consultant, undertaking various pro bono work, trying to improve my bridge and Italian language and, most recently, hosting Ukrainian refugees in collaboration with SWR. I am extremely excited about joining SWR as the Key Partners Trustee where I hope my background will help me to advance the goals of SWR and support the other volunteers and the refugees.
Donald Fleming
Compliance
I joined SWR relatively recently, initially as a language volunteer. For much of my career I have advised trustees of pension schemes around funding or when their employer is involved in a major transaction and I currently am a partner in a large consulting practice in London.
I have previously worked on the corporate finance side of a stockbroking firm for several years and also practised for several years as a banking and finance lawyer.
Chris Hix
Treasurer
I qualified as an accountant in 1980 at Unilever, for whom I worked for 17 years in the UK and abroad. I subsequently worked for Lloyds TSB, the NHS, and DEFRA and retired from the role of Head of Financial Accounting for the Department of Energy and Climate Change in 2015.
I am also involved in several other charities including Empathy Action, Safe Passage, Future Men and Action for Happiness, working in both finance and non-finance roles.
David Skinner
Trustee
I retired in 2020 after 16 years with Save the Children. I was Save the Children's Global Education Director, Country Director first for Afghanistan and then for Pakistan, and Team Leader for the Response to the Rohingya Crisis in Bangladesh. While at Save the Children I was also deployed during the Ebola crisis to Sierra Leone. Since retiring, I deployed again, within the UN architecture, for three months to Kyiv to set up the coordination of the education aspects of the entire international response to the crisis in Ukraine.
I am currently also chair of the statutory Independent Monitoring Board of HMP Maidstone, one of three prisons in the country to house only foreign nationals.
Chris Salmon
Strategic Implementation
I began working in the House of Lords over 20 years ago. I am currently Deputy Head of the Legislation Office, a role which I have held for about 10 years. Prior to the Lords, I trained as a barrister and worked as a government lawyer for the Court of Appeal Criminal Division and for the Law Commission criminal law team, after which I was Assistant Secretary to the Committee on Standards in Public Life, the body which monitors ethical standards across public life in the UK.
I have previously volunteered for the Samaritans in Tunbridge Wells. I currently work full time but am planning to take partial retirement. I am looking forward to the further opportunities for volunteering that working part time will provide.
When I retired I was looking for something useful to do. I found SWR entirely by chance and had never thought of doing this sort of thing before. The opportunity to work with these wonderful people has quite simply changed my life. I hope I can make a difference to their lives too.
I decided to join Sevenoaks Welcomes Refugees after I heard what was going on in Afghanistan. I chose to help where & when I could at events, and help share interesting articles on our social media.
I'm glad I decided to join and I'm glad I've met so many great people and made good friends.
I've always enjoyed making friends with people from other parts of the world. SWR represents a wholesome way to broaden my horizons and connect with the community.
The families we first started helping lived originally in Damascus and in the Aleppo and Idlib areas. They fled the fighting in Syria and moved to surrounding countries - Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt - where they registered with UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. The UK Government's Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme (SVPRS) was launched in January 2014 to help those refugees in the region surrounding Syria who are in the greatest need, including people requiring urgent medical treatment, survivors of violence and torture, and women and children at risk. For the Scheme's definition of vulnerability see here.
Sevenoaks Welcomes Refugees is also playing an active role in the Afghanistan refugee resettlement programme, and we have been working directly with around 50 Ukrainian families as part of the government's Homes for Ukraine scheme.
The Annual Accounts for 23/24 are here, the Annual Report is here, and the Independent Examiner's Report is here.
2022/23
The Annual Accounts for 22/23 are here, and the Annual Report is here.
2021/22
The combined Annual Accounts, Annual Report and Independent Examiner's Report for the financial year 2021/22 is here.
2020/21
The Accounts are here, and the Annual Report is here.
2019/20
The Accounts are here, and the Annual Report is here.