The Home Office will ramp up its use of former military sites to house thousands of asylum seekers as it closes more unpopular asylum hotels.
Ministers have earmarked three new former Ministry of Defence sites – MoD Bicester, MoD Barnham, and MoD Linton-on-Ouse – to house around 3,750 asylum seekers. Officials have begun discussions to use the sites but have not yet received planning permission, the Home Office said on Thursday, with the plans likely to face local opposition.
Officials attempted to use former RAF base Linton-on-Ouse in North Yorkshire to house asylum seekers under the previous Conservative government in 2022, before the Ministry of Defence backtracked on the plans.
Conservative MP for West Suffolk, Nick Timothy, has already expressed opposition to the use of RAF Barnham, near Thetford, saying that housing asylum seekers at the site “would affect safety, services and cohesion”.
The Home Office already uses the former “prison-like” RAF base Wethersfield in Braintree, Essex to house migrants and will expand the number of bed spaces at the controversial site from 800 to more than 1,200 under the plans.
Minister Alex Norris has defended the move to large sites, which are often more costly than hotels, saying that they will help “reducing those pull factors” for migrants coming to the UK.
But refugee charities have condemned the decision, saying the former military sites cause “profound and long-lasting harm to [asylum seekers’] mental and physical health”. Imran Hussain, director of external affairs at the Refugee Council, said ministers were “repeating policies that failed in the recent past”.
Kamena Dorling, director of policy at the Helen Bamber Foundation, said: “These sites are extremely isolated, resemble prisons with barbed wire and surveillance and lack privacy.
“For individuals who have already survived conflict, persecution, torture and trafficking, being forced to live in such conditions compounds existing trauma and can have devastating consequences for their mental and physical health, including depression, suicidal ideation and self-harm”.
Charlotte Khan, head of public affairs at Care4Calais, said: “We’ve supported people at these camps in places like Napier, Penally, Wethersfield and now Crowborough. Our experience on the ground has show these military camps are harmful to refugees’ health and wellbeing. For the survivors of torture and modern slavery, they are re-traumatising.”
Ministers will also seek to extend the use of Wethersfield beyond 2027 and the use of the former army camp Crowborough in East Sussex until 2023.
Twenty more hotels have also closed – including The Bell hotel in Epping, Essex, which was targeted by anti-migrant protesters in 2025 – as the Home Office pushes to end the government’s dependence on the costly accommodation. There are around 21,000 asylum seekers currently living in hotel accommodation.
The hotel in Epping was closed due to fire safety concerns earlier this month. The local council had previously taken the Home Office to court in an attempt to remove the asylum seekers living there, saying the site was a “feeding ground for unrest”, but were unsuccessful with a High Court judge ruling that the migrants must stay.
Mr Norris said: “We promised to close every asylum hotel and hand them back to communities, and that is exactly what we are doing. Twenty more hotels have closed, and hotel numbers have more than halved since their peak. Instead, we’re moving asylum seekers into ex-military sites that are a far cry from the hotels the last government left us with.”
The Home Office have spent around £7.5m on the Crowborough site so far and company Clearsprings Ready Homes currently have a 12-month contract to run the site and asylum seekers can stay there for up to 82 days.
After this, people are then moved into dispersal accommodation, such as houses of multiple occupancy. There are around 500 asylum seekers living at Crowborough army camp, and it has a maximum occupancy of 540.
Clearsprings, whose owner Graham King became a billionaire last year due to soaring profits, also run the Wetherfield site.
Some of the 20 hotels closed down by the Home Office since April include Holiday Inn Ashford Central in Kent, Best Western Atlantic in Chelmsford, The Collection Hotel in Birmingham, Allerton Court in Northallerton, Best Western in Wembley, Delta Hotel Cheshunt in Hertfordshire and the Mercure George in Reading.
There are now just under 170 asylum hotels still in use.
