World Refugee Day: How many visas under the Homes For Ukraine scheme have been issued for your council area?

Ukrainians fleeing from the Russian invasion of their homeland have been offered the chance to seek refuge in Scotland through a dedicated visa programme.

As World Refugee Day is marked on Monday, across the globe the UN Refugee Agency said there are more than 100 million displaced people in need of support.

More than 12,000 visas have been issued to Ukrainians hoping to come to Scotland fleeing Vladimir Putin’s war. 4,773 have arrived, according to the Home Office.

Here is a list of the number of visas issued under the Homes For Ukraine sponsorship programme as of June 14, broken down by the local authority of the sponsor’s property, in order from highest to lowest.

Four Scottish councils have been issued with fewer than five visas.

Edinburgh 524
Fife 295
Perth and Kinross 258
Glasgow 223
Highland 200
Aberdeenshire 167
Angus 142
Dumfries & Galloway 131
Argyll and Bute 127
South Lanarkshire 122
Aberdeen 111
Stirling 111
Scottish Borders 108
West Lothian 102
North Lanarkshire 86
East Lothian 78
Moray 74
South Ayrshire 62
Renfrewshire 61
North Ayrshire 58
Falkirk 55
East Ayrshire 54
Midlothian 54
Dundee City 51
East Dunbartonshire 51
East Renfrewshire 47
Inverclyde 37
Clackmannanshire 22

Na h-Eileanan Siar (Western Isles), Orkney Islands, Shetland Islands and West Dunbartonshire have been issued fewer than five visas. The exact total has been withheld for data disclosure purposes.

A total of 8,647 visas have been issued under the direct sponsorship of the Scottish Government as a “super sponsor”.

However, around 500 Ukrainians are still living in hotels a month after arriving in Scotland, a committee of MSPs was told this week.

Yevhen Mankovskyi, the Ukrainian consul general in Edinburgh, thanked Scotland for its support as he appeared before Holyrood’s Europe Committee on Thursday but said he did not understand what was causing a “block” between those arriving being matched with hosts.

The data above does not include the number of visas issued through the Ukraine Family Scheme, which allows applicants to join family members or extend their stay in the UK.

The data has been published by the Home Office and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.

The scheme allows Ukrainian nationals and their family members to come to the UK if they have a named sponsor.

Visas have been issued to local authorities based on the postcode of the sponsor’s address, or of the accommodation address if the applicant is not staying with the sponsor.

Not all records of visas have a postcode that has been mapped to a local authority area, but the number of records excluded is about 2%.