Cambridge City Council is offering cooking lessons to asylum seekers to allow them to “experience joy”. The council announced new funding for community groups, including funding for the culinary classes, as well as gardening classes for migrants.
It comes as the council became the second local authority to bring in a four-day week on full pay for staff. Sir James Cleverly, the former Tory home secretary, told The Telegraph the decision “speaks volumes that Labour councils are spending taxpayers’ money on cooking and gardening lessons to asylum seekers, whilst cutting back on bin collections all the while hiking council tax to record highs.”
He added: “In both Whitehall and your town hall, under Labour – you pay more and get less.”
The council told the newspaper that there had been no reductions in services such as bin collections, insisting that it continues to collect domestic waste, recycling and green waste.
Resettlement Community Grants, which were launched on July 23, offer up to £30,000 of public money for “arts and cultural projects, community crafts, cooking and food, gardening and connecting with nature, sports and other opportunities to experience joy”.
The council also vowed to “extend support to enable more refugees or asylum seekers to settle in Cambridge” after deciding to bolster the number of council homes made available to asylum seekers in March this year.
Delowar Hossain, a Tory councillor, was the only member of the council to oppose the move and also voiced disapproval of the decision to bring in a four-day work week.
He said: “Our residents work hard and pay taxes for full services. A four-day work week would mean they get only 80% of the service for the same tax they currently pay.”
A spokesman for the council said Cambridge was “proud to offer such a range of grants” which allow for “projects that will help to reduce social or economic inequality for Cambridge residents with the most need”.