Asylum seekers in UK to be housed at RAF military bases

The policy is part of a plan to reduce the £6.8 million daily bill for hotel accommodation

Migrants arrive in Dover, Kent, on Wednesday as the new plans were being announced. PA

Migrants in the UK will be housed in disused military bases under plans to reduce government spending on hotel accommodation.

Immigration minister Robert Jenrick unveiled the new plan in the House of Commons on Wednesday, and confirmed the first two RAF bases that will be used. Ferries and barges may also be used in the future.

The policy aims to reduce the £6.8 million ($8.4 million) daily bill for asylum seekers to stay in hotels.

Mr Jenrick said “several thousand” asylum seekers could be housed at repurposed barracks buildings and portable buildings at the two former Royal Air Force bases — RAF Wethersfield in Essex and RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire — despite some opposition from Tory MPs.

A separate site on private land in East Sussex in south-east England will also be used, he said.

The government is also exploring the “possibility of accommodating migrants in vessels” such as ferries and barges.

“Accommodation for migrants should meet their essential living needs and nothing more, because we cannot risk becoming a magnet for the millions of people who are displaced and seeking better economic prospects,” he said.

Mr Jenrick said Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was “bringing forward proposals” to use the Catterick Garrison barracks to house asylum seekers in his constituency to show “leadership”.

Charities described the military accommodation as “grossly inadequate” to house people who have fled war.

Sir Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP for Gainsborough in Lincolnshire, said an injunction will be sought against the “thoroughly bad decision”. There were similar warnings from Essex.

“I can inform him that the moment this is confirmed the local authority in West Lindsey will issue an immediate judicial review and injunction against this thoroughly bad decision which is not based on good governance but the politics of trying to do something,” Mr Leigh said.

Tory-run West Lindsey District Council said it was “extremely disappointed” by the plans to use Scampton.

Wethersfield is in the Braintree constituency of Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, who has argued the base “wasn't appropriate for asylum accommodation”.

Mr Cleverly said: “Although this decision isn't the result my constituents and I wanted, I have received assurances that community safety will remain paramount.”

Migrants at former RAF base in Manston — in pictures

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  A person gestures through a fence at the immigration processing centre in Manston, Kent in southern England. Reuters

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  Security staff work to cover the view of people thought to be migrants in the Manston centre. PA

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  An aerial view of the facility in Manston. PA

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  Seven hundred people were moved to the centre for safety reasons after incendiary devices were thrown at a Border Force migrant centre in Dover on Sunday. Reuters

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  A man holds up a baby in the immigration processing centre. Reuters

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  A woman at the Manston centre. Reuters

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  A tent inside the processing centre. Reuters

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  The entrance to the Manston immigration holding facility. AP

Mr Sunak told his cabinet on Tuesday that the cost of using hotels and the pressure it puts on local areas meant it was not sustainable.

He later told MPs that children could not be exempted from plans to detain people who cross the Channel in small boats, to prevent the creation of a “pull factor.”

Appearing before the Commons Liaison Committee, he also downplayed suggestions that flights under the government's stalled Rwanda policy would begin this summer.

Mr Cleverly was critical after reports first surfaced that RAF Wethersfield near Braintree could be used to accommodate asylum seekers.

“I highlighted the remote nature of the site, the limited transport infrastructure and narrow road network, and that these factors would mean the site wasn't appropriate for asylum accommodation,” he wrote on Facebook.