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Asylum seekers are being moved out of the Government’s flagship new accommodation site, which was designed to reduce the number of people housed in hotels, and back into hotels.
i understands that 70 asylum seekers are being moved out of RAF Wethersfield, which was converted to asylum accommodation last year in order to crack down on the amount of money being spent on housing asylum seekers.
The cost of hotel accommodation for asylum seekers is around £8m a day, according to a Home Office report in September.
The asylum seekers were notified of the intention to move them through signs put up at the former military base this week.
Home Office sources said the move was temporary as the department works to fulfil the terms of a Special Development Order (SDO), which would enable it to use Wethersfield as asylum accommodation long term.
However, it is not clear how long the asylum seekers will be housed in hotels for, or what this will cost.
An SDO is a form of secondary legislation that grants planning permission for specific kinds of development in a particular area.
Previous permission allowed RAF Wethersfield to be used as asylum accommodation site until April 2024, but the new SDO allows for three years with an additional six months for decommissioning.
The Government has repeatedly committed to ending the use of hotels for asylum seekers, with Home Secretary James Cleverly confirming it was “moving away from using hotels” in order to “reduce the cost to the public purse.”
The site has been hit by a number of controversies since it opened to asylum seekers in July 2023.
Asylum seekers have staged hunger strikes and street protests over the conditions amid a scabies outbreak, while some have made suicide attempts, according to charity workers supporting them.
Hannah Marwood, head of legal access at Care4Calais said: “Daily reports of detoriating mental health, self-harm, suicidal intent, and attempted suicides. That’s the human cost of using the camp, and for what? To use hotel accommodation after months of that misery?”
In November, an ambulance was called to the site an average of once a day, and there have been reports of “almost nightly fighting” between men at the centre.
An official Government report, seen by i, warned of “unexploded ordnance”, radiation and “spills and leaks” at the site due to its previous use as a military base, which it said might pose a “risk to human health”.
Although the report dates back to 2005, neither the MoD or the Home Office have carried out any decontamination work at the site since the concerns were first raised.
In November, i revealed that the then-Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick had blocked a charity from supporting asylum seekers at the base and had prevented aid workers from providing individuals with clothing and haircuts on site.
Asylum seekers living at Wethersfield have also complained of being isolated. The 800-acre site, surrounded by barbed wire, is located two miles from the nearest village, Wethersfield, though limited mini-bus services run to neighbouring towns such as Braintree and Chelmsford.
RAF Wethersfield falls within Mr Cleverly’s Braintree constituency, and he has previously publicly voiced opposition to the plan, saying it was too remote and isolated to be “appropriate” for asylum accommodation.
The site has its own healthcare facilities, a multi-faith centre and recreation facilities, including an indoor basketball court and a gym.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “We have always been clear that the use of asylum hotels is unacceptable which is why we moved asylum seekers on to former military sites, thereby reducing the impact on local communities. We delivered on our plan by closing one hundred asylum hotels by the end of March.
“Planning permission has been granted to extend the use of Wethersfield for three years under a Special Development Order and we will be using a phased approach to gradually increase the number of asylum seekers accommodated at the site.”
