Mass asylum seeker accommodation at Napier barracks to close
The news is buried in a Home Office document uploaded to parliament's cross-party home affairs committee on Tuesday as part of an investigation into the provision of asylum accommodation. In the document the Home Office states: 'The Home Office intend to occupy and deliver services at Napier until September 2025, at which point the site will be handed back to the Ministry of Defence.'
Napier, along with Penally barracks in Pembrokeshire, which was used to house asylum seekers for a few months at the end of 2020 and beginning of 2021, were opened due to pressures the Home Office was under to provide suitable accommodation for asylum seekers during the pandemic.
Napier has capacity for 328 male asylum seekers, who were accommodated in dormitories. There was a mass Covid outbreak in July 2021 with 197 cases identified. A high court ruling in 2021 found that the site did not meet 'minimum standards'.
Initially, asylum seekers were accommodated there for an indefinite period but the Home Office subsequently introduced a 90-day limit which the men held there said made their time there more bearable.
The use of or plans to use Home Office mass accommodation sites for asylum seekers has been controversial, with proposals to use military bases RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire and one at Linton-on-Ouse never getting off the ground.
Watchdogs criticised the Home Office for spending millions on the purchase of Northeye in Bexhill, East Sussex. The Bibby Stockholm, where asylum seeker Leonard Farruku died following a suspected suicide and where there was an evacuation after potentially deadly legionella bacteria was found, also attracted controversy and has now closed.
Only Wethersfield, a remote military base in Essex continues to operate without a confirmed end date. Three asylum seekers were found to have been accommodated there unlawfully in a high court ruling last week, although the judge found in the Home Office's favour on most of the broader points of the challenge.
Emily Soothill of Deighton Pierce Glynn solicitors, who has represented asylum seekers challenging conditions at Napier, said: 'We welcome the news that the government plans to cease using Napier Barracks as asylum accommodation. It is almost four years since the high court found, based on government evidence, that the home secretary had acted unlawfully in accommodating our clients at Napier Barracks, yet it continues to be used to accommodate hundreds of asylum seekers.
'People seeking asylum, especially victims of torture and trafficking, are more vulnerable to physical and mental illness. They have the right to be treated with dignity and should not be accommodated en masse in military barracks.'
Sally Hough, the director of Napier Drop-In Centre, which provides support and activities for asylum seekers housed at Napier, said: 'Housing vulnerable people in dilapidated former military accommodation scheduled for demolition is wrong and a stain on our record of being a nation of sanctuary. One unintended outcome was how the camp galvanised the local community in support of the residents.
'Mass accommodation sites like Napier Barracks didn't have their intended effect. The camps didn't stop people from wanting to claim asylum in the UK and they didn't succeed in dividing our community. The opening of the camp encouraged people like myself to step up and build a bridge between the camp and the local community, dispel fear and foster integration and understanding.'
The Home Office has been approached for comment.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Telegraph
4 hours ago
- Telegraph
The public is sick of the Government's failure to tackle illegal migration
SIR – The Home Office is said to be furious that migrants can no longer be housed at the Bell Hotel in Eppi ng (report, August 20), after the council was granted a temporary injunction by the High Court. This fury is hardly surprising, as it means that the Home Office will have to come up with an idea to stop the boats that actually works. At the very least, it will have to speed up deportation proceedings. This will probably be a complete and utter surprise to the Government, but the British public is heartily sick of its inertia and reluctance to stop illegal immigration. Charles Penfold Ulverston, Cumbria SIR – Local councillors are acting in the interests of the people they represent and in the na tional interest ('Other councils expected to submit their own legal challenges ', report, August 20). Government ministers should try it. Gary F S Knight Colchester, Essex SIR – Not taking effective action, with or without good reason, seems to be the stock in trade of the Home Office. In July, you reported on the progress of a dinghy escorted by the French Navy to the point in mid-Channel where our Border Force 'taxi' was waiting. The French even demanded the return of the life jackets loaned to the illegal migrants, so that they might be reused. If the Home Office has a policy, it is clearly not 'to smash' these gangs. Wilfred Attenborough Lincoln SIR – With 50,000 illegal migrants needing to be accommodated somewhere in the UK, Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, must now be back at square one. She might look at sites like RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire, which was decked out at great expense under the Tories and then closed before housing anyone. Put simply, the 'one in, one out' scheme doesn't reduce the numbers coming to our shores. This Government, already short of ideas, has run out of road. Immediate deportation of illegal migrants back to the country they first arrived at is now the only option. Jonathan Williams Pickworth, Lincolnshire SIR – Last Sunday, hundreds of citizens gathered in Ashington, Northumberland, to protest against housing illegal immigrants in the area. In a statement posted on Facebook, Ian Lavery, the Labour MP for Blyth and Ashington, admitted that public services are crumbling, and ended by saying: 'But let's be clear: the people responsible for this decline are not those fleeing war or persecution. They are not the vulnerable seeking sanctuary.' Would that be sanctuary from war-torn France, perhaps? Ian Burns Storrington, West Sussex
Sky News
5 hours ago
- Sky News
Labour smell dirty tricks over asylum hotel court ruling - but the risks are clear
"It's an interesting moment," was how one government source described the High Court ruling that will force an Essex hotel to be emptied of asylum seekers within weeks. That may prove to be the understatement of the summer. For clues as to why, just take a glance at what the Home Office's own lawyer told the court on Tuesday. Granting the injunction"runs the risk of acting as an impetus for further violent protests", the barrister said - pointing out that similar legal claims by other councils would "aggravate pressures on the asylum estate". Right on cue and just hours after the ruling came in, Broxbourne Council - over the border in Hertfordshire - posted online that it was urgently seeking legal advice with a view to taking similar court action. The risks here are clear. Recent figures show just over 30,000 asylum seekers being housed in hotels across the country. If they start to empty out following a string of court claims, the Home Office will struggle to find alternative options. After all, they are only in hotels because of a lack of other types of accommodation. There are several caveats though. This is just an interim injunction that will be heard in full in the autumn. So the court could swing back in favour of the hotel chain - and by extension the Home Office. We have been here before Remember, this isn't the first legal claim of this kind. Other councils have tried to leverage the power of the courts to shut down asylum hotels, with varying degrees of success. In 2022, Ipswich Borough Council failed to get an extension to an interim injunction to prevent migrants being sent to a Novotel in the town. As in Epping, lawyers argued there had been a change in use under planning rules. But the judge eventually decided that the legal duty the Home Office has to provide accommodation for asylum seekers was more important. So there may not be a direct read across from this case to other councils. Home Office officials are emphasising this injunction was won on the grounds of planning laws rather than national issues such as public order, and as such, each case will be different. UK signs migrant return deal with Iraq The government is on Wednesday announcing a migrants return deal with Iraq. The deal, signed by Home Office minister Dan Jarvis, will set up a formal process to return Iraqis who have arrived in the UK with no right to stay in the country. It comes after an £800,000 deal with Baghdad last year to try to crack down on smuggling networks and organised crime. Home Office statistics said since previous deals, the number of Iraqis arriving in the UK by small boat has fallen to 1,900 in the year to March 2025, down from 2,600 in the previous year. Mr Jarvis said: "By working together on security, development and migration challenges, we are building stronger relationships that benefit both our countries whilst tackling shared challenges like organised crime and irregular migration." Similar agreements have already been made with Albania and Vietnam since Labour came into power. Earlier this month, the UK-France migrant deal came into force, where small boat migrants who have arrived over the English Channel from the French coast can be returned to the country in exchange for a legitimate asylum seeker. Failing Labour approach or Tory tricks? But government sources also smell dirty tricks from Epping Council and are suggesting that the Tory-led local authority made the legal claim for political reasons. Pointing to the presence of several prominent Tory MPs in the Essex area - as well as the threat posed by Reform in the county - the question being posed is why this legal challenge was not brought when asylum seekers first started being sent to the hotel in 2020 during the Conservatives ' time in government. Epping Council would no doubt reject that and say recent disorder prompted them to act. But that won't stop the Tories and Reform of seizing on this as evidence of a failing approach from Labour.
The Sun
6 hours ago
- The Sun
There's only one way out of Labour's asylum hotel chaos – but will Starmer EVER do it?
Judge dread THE mums and dads of Epping have forced the Government to accept that the use of hotels to house asylum seekers is now unsustainable. Dozens of council leaders rushed forward yesterday to say they would be launching their own legal challenges. 1 But the Government remains clueless about where to put asylum seekers. Home Office minister Dan Jarvis muttered about 'appropriate' alternatives yesterday but could not explain what they might be. They must know that if large groups of young men are placed in blocks of flats and houses among communities that don't want them, then protests like the one seen in Epping will simply shift there instead. Labour has no answer to this and remains unwilling to accept the obvious short term solution: building secure detention centres. It's also ironic — after years of Labour's glorying in the Tories' struggles with activist judges — to see Keir Starmer now blown off course by a High Court decision. Aside from ending the benefits incentive for asylum seekers, there is only one way out of this for the PM. Work to reform the European Court of Human Rights and use new laws to deport illegal migrants immediately. Will he ever do it? Monster's ball WHY are prison chiefs treating the Southport killer like a naughty teenager instead of the sick monster that he is? Alex Rudakubana threw boiling water over a prison guard in a terrifying pre-planned attack from a landing. Protesters arrested near migrant hotel after 'asylum seeker guest' arrested on suspicion of assault His punishment was to have his 'privileges' taken away. Now the beast has his TV and DVD player back in a desperate bribe by prison governors to get him to behave. It's the same soft touch culture that allowed Soham double murderer Ian Huntley to stroll around his prison wing wearing a Manchester United lookalike shirt mocking his victims. Radicalised, sadistic and highly dangerous, Rudakubana will never change. Stop indulging him. Unhappy birthday WE wonder — as he sipped his bottles of Prosecco on his birthday — if Huw Edwards considered finally doing the right thing and returning the BBC licence-payers' money he trousered? The shamed star earned £200,000 in salary AFTER his arrest on child sex offences. Since pleading guilty and being fired, he has been living off his £300,000-a-year pension. But Edwards, a narcissist sex offender and bully, has never done anything remotely decent in his life. No doubt his victims will be hoping he choked on his bubbly.
