MORE than 8000 Scots have signed up to offer accommodation and help to Ukrainians fleeing the war against Russia.

They are among more than 140,000 across the UK who have done so via the government’s ‘Homes for Ukraine’ scheme.

Near Glasgow, one family hope they will help to provide refugees a safe place to call home, a friendly welcome and as much of a sense of normality as they can given what their home country is suffering.

Allan Cowan and his wife Angela have signed up for Homes for Ukraine, and with the charity Sanctuary Foundation, hoping to either lend out their spare rooms to those in need or act as befrienders and mentors to those who come to Scotland.

Speaking to our sister title, the Herald on Sunday, Mr Cowan, a retired solicitor from Bearsden, said he was reliant on help from the charity to find a Ukrainian person in need of assistance, as he had “little faith” in the Home Office system.

It comes after another British man, Max Fox, travelled to Poland on Friday saying he was "proactively" looking for someone to host in his Lancashire home, and criticised the Government's current set-up.

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Mr Cowan explained: “My wife and I haven’t yet made a final decision on if we’re going to do – it might be mentoring; it might be having someone stay in our house. We’re both retired and our kids have grown up and gone away, so we do have spare bedrooms in our house. We are still waiting on more details from the scheme as they seem to be few and far between at the moment.”

He said that they are yet to make contact with anyone in Ukraine as “we wouldn’t know where to start”, adding: “We’re having to rely on the charity to point us in the right direction.

“I doubt very much that the Home Office will put people our way, I don’t have a lot of confidence in the Home Office and their past performance. I think the hope is with these charities who seem to have a track record of helping people from previous refugee crises.”

The UK Government’s Homes for Ukraine Scheme, being led by Levelling Up and Communities Secretary Michael Gove, is dependent on British nationals identifying people in Ukraine who need help themselves and offering to sponsor them.

Mr Gove has insisted it is the quickest way to get people matched up with sponsors and in to the UK, however some charities have warned that the approach could backfire and lead to chaos.

The method, Mr Cowan argued, was impractical for many people, explaining: “I wouldn’t be comfortable going on social media and advertising that we are offering help. First of all I don’t use social media and I don’t want to either, not because of my age but because I don’t like living my life online.

“I would rather do this through people with experience in this area.

“The Home office have made such a mess of previous refugee crises, this time they are putting the onus on to the public and there’s clearly a great deal of wiliness in the British public to help people, but I think the government made various missteps at the beginning when they insisted that Ukrainians had to have visas to get in.”

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Having visited Ukraine in the 70s, Mr Cowan said he connected with the plight of ordinary civilians having to flee the conflict and it inspired him to want to help.

He said: “I’ve got a slight connection with Kyiv, I was there in 1979 when it was still part of the soviet union.

“I was there with two friends from university on a semi-official trip.

“In those days, the USSR was a very centralised state and although Ukraine was nominally a republic, they did whatever Moscow told them to do. We weren’t particularly  conscious of it being specifically Ukrainian at that time

“Obviously with everything that’s happened, myself and most of the rest of us in this country have become very aware that Ukrainians do feel themselves to be their own people and their own nation. As Scots we can, to some extent, sympathise with that.”

If successful in finding a Ukrainian person to sponsor, Mr Cowan said he and his family would “like to make them feel welcome in Glasgow” and ensure they were comfortable, adding: “If we were to offer accommodation, we’d want to make sure they were comfortable and we were comfortable with them, and we can get along together.

“If that doesn’t happen, then we would probably make a point of meeting with people and showing them a bit of Glasgow, taking them to see some of the countryside. Just generally trying to help them settle, even if its only for a short period. I’m assuming most of these folk will want to go back to Ukraine when all this is over.”

While thousands of people in the UK have offered to open their homes to Ukrainians, the scheme only officially began processing registrations and applications on Friday.

It remains to be seen how many of the 140,000 who have registered are successful in hosting refugees.

If you have signed up to help Ukrainian refugees with accommodation, get in touch via news@glasgowtimes.co.uk to share your experience.