Refugee host says visa rules are 'shambolic' leaving Ukrainians stranded

• Polly Vacher gives ITV News Meridian reporter Heather Edwards a tour around the annexe at their home, soon to house a Ukrainian family

A refugee host from Oxfordshire says the government's visa rules are 'shambolic', leaving mothers and children who have fled Ukraine stranded. 

Polly Vacher, 78, who is co-ordinating her village's effort, says so far they have had one visa come through for a mother, but they are still waiting for approval for her young children.

Sixteen families in the village of North Moreton are offering rooms for between 40 and 50 refugees.

As well as offering homes, families have offered to cook food, they are turning the village hall into a community centre and a local bookshop is even buying Ukrainian books for the children.

Polly and her husband Peter are opening the annexe at their home, where they have lived for 16 years, to a young Ukrainian family.

The father is a doctor, who will remain in the country, but his wife and two children plan to come to England once all of their visas are approved.

Polly said: "I've spoken to them already on the phone and we've emailed them, and they're in desperate straits, they're desperate, they don't know where to go, how they can get out of Ukraine."

Peter, 79, said: "We've got everything else in place, we've got offers of an aircraft to bring 184 people over, but because of the way visas are trickling through, our chances of actually being able to fill that aircraft we've been given, is just going to be impossible."

Mrs Vacher, a former music teacher who became an amateur pilot aged 50, has flown solo around the world twice in a single engine aircraft and over the North Pole and the Antarctic.

She said: "The more publicity we can get and the more pressure we can put on the Government, absolutely we must.

"They must get these people out, they are in shocking conditions."