The refugees will receive housing, access to medical care and education, and they can work from day one, under the UK’s resettlement scheme.
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The LGA said: “Councils across the country are coming forward with offers to help Syrian refugees and we are pressing Government on exactly how the scheme will operate”.
“So we need to return those people who are illegal economic migrants and who have no right to be here”.
David Cameron said the UK’s expanded vulnerable person resettlement scheme would take 4,000 refugees a year over the next five years, a total of 20,000.
Ms Fleming said it is “essential” that the 120,000 additional places are approved this week for any relocation programme to be considered “credible” but claimed that any scheme can not be effectively implemented without the creation of “adequate reception facilities” in countries where refugees and migrants enter Europe.
The deadlock comes less than a week after the home secretary told the House of Commons that refugees would begin arriving this week.
She said: “Britain must end its refusal to take refugees already in Europe”.
“Every other European country will be taking some of the refugees from Greece and Italy”.
“Until European Union governments agree real action, hundreds of thousands of people remain in limbo across Europe – including thousands of unaccompanied children”.
BBC home affairs correspondent Daniel Sandford said the first arrivals amounted to a “handful” of refugees and eventually the United Kingdom would have to take about 400 refugees a month in order to meet its 20,000 target by 2020. “As the Prime Minister announced earlier this month, we will resettle 20,000 Syrians over the course of this Parliament through this scheme”, The Independent newspaper sited a Home Office spokesperson as saying.
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“We are working closely with the UNHCR and local authorities to make sure we are ready to welcome more Syrians who desperately need our assistance”, the government department said in a statement.
