Home Office plan to use more military bases to house asylum seekers
While the government is trying to move people out of hotels, the Ministry of Internal Affairs is trying to use three more military sites to house thousands of refugees.
Three Ministry of Defense (MoD) facilities at Bicester in Oxfordshire, Barnham in Suffolk and Linton-on-Ouse in North Yorkshire could accommodate around 3,750 asylum seekers if planning permission was granted.
The government also plans to extend the use of existing military installations in Crowborough, East Sussex, to 2030, and the use of existing military installations in Wethersfield, Essex, beyond 2027.
Labor has vowed to stop using asylum hotels, an expensive type of accommodation that has become the focus of anti-immigrant protests.
As of March this year, 20,885 (21%) refugees were waiting for decisions in hotels and 72,768 (75%) in other accommodation places.
The number of refugees in hotels peaked at 56,000 in September 2023.
On Thursday, the Home Office said a further 20 asylum hotels had been closed, bringing the number in use to 170.
Border Security and Asylum Minister Alex Norris said: “We are moving asylum seekers to former military sites that are far from the hotels the last government left us.
“This is a system that has been brought back under control and we will not stop until the job is done.”
But Chris Philp, the Conservative shadow home secretary, said Labor “should be putting illegal immigrants on planes rather than dealing with military camps and hotels”.
He said Labor “will not do what is necessary to remove barriers to deportation and will not act as a deterrent to deportation”.
Liberal Democrat MP Callum Miller told Radio 4’s Today program that he opposed the use of the MOD site in his Bicester and Woodstock constituencies and accused the government of “lack of a credible plan for how to manage the site and maintain social cohesion”.
“The question we are looking for an answer to is why the government thought it was possible to resettle 1,250 refugees in one community when the number of nearest villages was 370. I have literally no idea how the government could accommodate this in the community.”
The government last year announced its intention to increase the number of Ministry of Defense facilities it uses to house refugees.
Two former military facilities – RAF Wethersfield in Essex and Crowborough Training Camp in East Sussex – are currently used to house refugees.
However, the use of military areas for this purpose has been hampered by practical difficulties and has been highly contested by both local residents and human rights groups.
A plan to house up to 300 male refugees at Cameron Barracks in Inverness has been canceled following protests, an MP said this week.
The Red Cross said military barracks “are often located in isolated locations and by their nature can re-traumatize people fleeing conflict and persecution.”
Sam Turner, director of migration and displacement at the British Red Cross, said: “It is clear that housing people seeking asylum in hotels does not work well for anyone, but any alternative accommodation must enable people to live in safety and dignity.”
