FARNHAM Homes for Ukraine has again hit out at the ‘scandalous’ bureaucracy at the UK Home Office for preventing young families – some cowering under shellfire and others stuck in temporary accommodation across Europe – from completing their journeys to the UK and to safety.

Founder of the group, Kate Larmer, told the Herald the situation has improved in the last week after she discovered many of the 200-plus people she has found homes for in the Farnham area had been granted visas without being notified.

But many families fleeing the fighting in their home country are still mired in government red tape. This includes university professor and mum-of-two Olga Kolisnyk who has been told by UK visa officials her six month old daughter Maria requires biometric scans 800 miles away in Warsaw before they can fly to the UK.

Olga – whose family has been sponsored by a couple in Odiham – applied five weeks ago to take her baby Maria and 11 year old son Illia to the UK from their home in Kharkiv, at the heart of the fighting in eastern Ukraine.

The family was initially told Maria could travel on her mother’s passport.

But just two days later Olga was told by government officials in Sheffield this was no longer acceptable, and she would first have to travel across Ukraine to Warsaw – with no guarantee that her visas would be approved.

Responding, a government spokesperson said more than 71,800 visas have now been granted to those fleeing Ukraine, with 21,600 Ukrainians arriving safely in the UK.