Inside the three towns where disused Army barracks will house asylum seekers

At first glance, a Yorkshire village, an affluent Oxfordshire town and a corner of rural East Anglia adjacent to a one-time nuclear weapons storage facility would appear to have little common. But, all three communities have now been united by indignation at their inclusion in a controversial shift in Government policy for housing asylum seekers.

Three Ministry of Defence sites at Linton-on-Ouse, a small village north of York, the commuter town of Bicester, and Barnham, a village on the Suffolk-Norfolk border, have been selected by the Home Office as sites to house 3,750 asylum seekers – if planning permission is granted.

A planned protest on Sunday outside the gates of RAF Barnham, which once stored some of Britain’s nuclear weapons, and a rash of petitions and announcements of public meetings this weekend were an indication of the strength of opposition in each of the affected communities.

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Campaigners in Linton-on-Ouse accused Sir Keir Starmer of “galling hypocrisy” after comments he made in 2022 about the then-Conservative government’s plans to house asylum seekers in the Yorkshire village.

The then-leader of the opposition pledged to oppose the scheme and accused Boris Johnson’s government of “chaos” and a “lack of decency” by failing to consult residents.

While some have said they are happy to see migrants and asylum seekers housed in their vicinity, others have pointed to what they consider to be obstacles, including bringing more people into small communities, a lack of infrastructure such as transport and the high cost of converting disused military sites to provide adequate accommodation.

In two of the three locations – Linton-on-Ouse and Bicester – previous proposals foundered over opposition and planning delays. But ministers have said they intend to press ahead with the proposals and “do whatever it takes” to close asylum hotels and move migrants to alternative accommodation.

It was with a mixture of weariness and disbelief that the residents of this small North Yorkshire village awoke on Friday to the news that – once more – their community had become a focus for the UK’s ongoing struggles with housing asylum seekers.

In 2022, a previous plan by Boris Johnson’s government to use the former Second World War bomber base for migrant accommodation was scrapped in the face of trenchant local opposition.

Opponents argued that the community of about 700, which sits on flood-threatened land some eight miles northeast of York, is singularly unsuitable for accommodating an additional 1,200 individuals due to factors including its relative isolation, long-standing problems with sewage capacity and power supply, and the decay of 1940s-era buildings on the site.

Professor Olga Matthias, a resident and one of the leading campaigners against the plans four years ago, said: “There are technical, ethical and humanitarian considerations here for the Home Office which we argued successfully in 2022 did not stand up to any reflection of reality.

“Put simply, those factors have not changed at all and in some instances, such as the condition of the buildings, have deteriorated further.”

Residents argue that the community, whose sole shop closed after 2022, cannot absorb a population increase particularly given the fact the MoD site sits more or less within the fabric of the village. The rural location is served by four buses a day to York during the week.

Prior to the abandonment of the scheme in 2022, the Home Office spent £3m on “physical works and provision of personnel” for the site and signed a £32.8m contract with private provider Serco to run the facility.

Laila Goodridge, another member of the campaign group, said the likelihood was that the 2026 proposal would be “astronomically” expensive, as the site has been empty for four years and has been stripped out.

Villagers have already received support from regional politicians. Carl Les, the Conservative leader of North Yorkshire Council, described the scheme as “the wrong proposal in the wrong location”.

Those opposed to the project were this weekend quietly pointing to the words of Sir Keir Starmer in May 2022 when, as then-leader of the opposition, he insisted that Labour would not support the then-Tory government’s plans for Linton-on-Ouse.

At the time, Starmer said: “To call it a plan is too grand: they don’t know what they are doing, they haven’t thought it through and they haven’t even had the decency to consult local people about it, which tells you just about everything you need to know about the state of chaos they are in.”

Matthias said: “The hypocrisy is just galling.”

The Government said it was clear that the use of large sites to house asylum seekers would reduce the “pull factors” bringing migrants illegally to the UK.

A spokesperson said: “We are closing every asylum hotel and moving asylum seekers into basic accommodation including ex-military sites. This is an important step in ending the perception you can arrive in the UK illegally and be put up in a hotel.”

Situated on the Suffolk-Norfolk border and a short distance from the town of Thetford, RAF Barnham was at one time one of the most sensitive Cold War locations in Europe. Up until the early 60s, it was an ultra-secure storage site for Britain’s stock of nuclear gravity bombs.

Among local figures who have voiced opposition to the Home Office’s asylum seeker plan on the disused base is the Labour MP for neighbouring Thetford.

Terry Jermy, the MP for South West Norfolk, said he would be “strongly objecting” to the proposals and accused the Home Office of a “lack of transparency and engagement”.

The Labour MP follows former Conservative home secretary James Cleverly, the MP for Braintree, in formally opposing a decision made by his own party. Cleverly is a long-standing opponent of the use of RAF Wethersfield, an MoD base in his constituency, to house asylum seekers.

The Government announced last week that alongside the three new sites it was also expanding the capacity of the Wethersfield site and that it would now stay open indefinitely.

Elsewhere in the Barnham community, there were alternative views on the Government’s desire to use military sites to house larger numbers of asylum seekers while their claims are processed by the authorities.

The Home Office last week underlined that it was making the move to meet its pledge to stop using asylum hotels by the next election, announcing the closure of a further 20 hotels.

The number of people staying in such accommodation fell by 35 per cent in the year to the end of March, standing at 20,885 people. At the end of September 2023 it had stood at 56,018.

Cliff Waterman, the Labour leader of West Suffolk Council, said it was important for the views residents to be taken into consideration. He added: “I equally recognise that taking asylum seekers out of hotels and into more suitable accommodation while their applications are processed is the right policy and that using mothballed facilities, such as MoD properties, properly managed and with the right facilities, is an obvious thing to explore.”

The Government has insisted that economies of scale will mean that running the military base accommodation will eventually be cheaper than asylum hotels, which currently cost about £170 per person per night. Between April 2025 to March 2025, the Government spent £2.1bn on hotel accommodation.

The choice of a former British Army barrack on the edge of this largely affluent Oxfordshire town is a perhaps less rural setting than the other two sites selected by the Home Office.

Nonetheless, representatives of the town, probably best known for its luxury brand outlet shopping centre which attracts seven million visitors a year, many of them foreign tourists, made similar arguments that the MoD site and its surroundings were not appropriate for a substantial influx of migrants.

Calum Miller, the Liberal Democrat MP for Bicester and Woodstock, accused ministers of having “no credible plan” for managing the site or maintaining social cohesion.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “The question we are looking for the answer to is why the Government thinks it is possible to put 1,250 asylum seekers into a community when the nearest village numbers 370. I’ve literally no idea how the Government thinks that can be absorbed into the community.”

The local authority, Cherwell District Council, which will ultimately be asked to grant any planning approval needed for the site, complained that there had been “no engagement or consultation… in any capacity” over the plans.

Lesley McLean, the Lib Dem leader of the council, said: “It’s astounding to think that proposals of this scale are being brought forward by Government without communication with the local authority and affected communities.”

The Home Office said it was following through on a pledge last year to increase the number of ex-military sites used to house asylum seekers.