Written evidence submitted by Braintree District Council (AAC0088)

Wethersfield Asylum Centre is within the Braintree District Council (BDC) area. The site currently has capacity for 580 single men aged 18 to 65. Men stay for a maximum of nine months before being moved to dispersal accommodation across the UK. Capacity is expected to rise to 800 in the near future.

There are also a small number of dispersed accommodation bedspaces in the district.

Reasons for evidence submission/summary

Our reason for submitting evidence focuses predominantly on our experience as the local authority dealing with the largest contingency accommodation site (a ‘large site’) for asylum seekers in the UK.

While we support a place-based approach to asylum accommodation, we feel the project delivery for Wethersfield was over-optimistic, rushed and did not take into account valid concerns from local stakeholders.

The decision to bypass BDC as the local planning authority soured relations at a time when co-operation should have been at its highest; the Home Office’s reluctance to engage meaningfully led to preventable shortcomings regarding the asylum accommodation.

While this relationship has grown over time to deliver significant improvements on site, concerns regarding safeguarding, data sharing, communications and funding instructions remain.

The delivery of asylum accommodation

Identifying and delivering appropriate accommodation

In oral evidence given to the Public Accounts Committee on April 15 2024, the Permanent Home Secretary Sir Matthew Rycroft detailed the need to “operate at pace” in standing up large sites because of the lack of private accommodation, including hotels, available at the time. Sir Matthew told the committee the situation meant the Home Office (HO) needed to look at the large sites programme in a “novel” and “creative” way, but also conceded there had been a “very significant optimism bias” in implementing the project.

At the same evidence session, Joanna Rowland, HO Director General for the Customer Services Group, admitted the programme did not have “the right expertise” at the time the sites were being stood up. The impact of this approach has had lasting ramifications. 

That lack of expertise may account for the decision by the HO to build a non-detained asylum centre for up to 1,700 men in a sparsely populated and inaccessible location in rural Essex. The Wethersfield asylum centre is situated at the former Wethersfield airfield, which is between the villages of Wethersfield (population 725) and Finchingfield (population 755). Both villages have a high proportion of family housing and relatively high populations of older people.

Wethersfield has a local community run shop and a few other very limited community facilities. Finchingfield is slightly better serviced but still has the infrastructure challenges a typical rural village in Essex faces. The site is 10 miles to the nearest railway station and nine miles from the nearest A-road.

While asylum seekers are free to come and go, it is a 15-minute walk from the centre to the nearest bus stop along unlit roads, with sections at the national speed limit. Bus services were discontinued in July 2024 and replaced with an on-demand service. In practice, service users are highly reliant on HO-contracted transport to the nearby locations of Braintree (8 miles), Chelmsford (20 miles) and Colchester (24 miles). This service runs several times a day.

Estimated set-up costs for a site hosting 1,700 asylum seekers were £5m. According to the latest publicly available figures from the National Audit Office’s investigation into asylum accommodation report in March 2024, that estimation rose to £49m for a site holding 800.

In view of its location, Wethersfield would be better suited as permanent initial accommodation and/or to meet unexpected surge capacity. Both only require short days.

If it is to continue as time-limited contingency accommodation, it needs more resources to make it possible for asylum seekers to be meaningfully occupied and to make them better neighbours for the local community. A volunteer co-ordinator to recruit and guide activities to develop opportunities on and off site, space for immigration legal aid to be delivered and a Migrant Help service which is resourced to match the number of clients onsite as they arrive rather than after would be welcomed.

Engaging and working with stakeholders

BDC first learnt about HO plans for Wethersfield just four months before the site went live. Evidence we have seen as part of legal proceedings suggests the advice was to inform local stakeholders as late as possible.

The act of implementing large sites of this scale without any proper notice or consultation with the communities affected set the initial tone as one of confrontation rather than collaboration.

There has been a woeful lack of information supplied to the local community, which has served to heighten tensions and threaten cohesion.

Stakeholders should have been informed on what was going on, supplied with the correct information, and trusted not to react negatively. The site had been of interest to the Ministry of Justice as a potential prison location for some time, but BDC were first made aware of the HO’s interest in Wethersfield airfield as a site for asylum accommodation in March 2023.

That month, the HO informed BDC that while no decision had been taken at that stage, plans to provide contingency accommodation at the airbase were under consideration. Throughout March, numerous meetings between BDC and the HO were held to seek clarification on the proposal.

BDC made it clear that the site was unsuitable given the lack of capacity in local services, its isolated location, the size of the site being considered and the significant adverse impact it would have on the local community. During these discussions, activity took place on site, and it became clear the HO intended to bypass BDC as the planning authority for the area.

On March 29 2023, the HO announced that it was intending to proceed with securing accommodation for asylum seekers at Wethersfield Airfield for a period of 12 months through the use of permitted development rights (Class Q). The same day, BDC began legal proceedings and applied for an interim injunction at the High Court.

The Council was unsuccessful in securing an injunction against the Secretary of State for the HO, and Secretary of State for Defence, with Judgement being received in April 2023. That Judgement was subject to an appeal, which was dismissed in June 2023. Work to stand up the site continued during litigation. The first asylum seekers arrived at Wethersfield on July 12, 2023.

Further, the Council issued Judicial Review proceedings against the Secretary of State for the HO and Secretary of State for Defence in April 2023. These were one of three Judicial Review proceedings issued, the others were brought by a local resident in their private capacity, and the other was West Lindsay District Council following similar announcements in their area regarding the use of RAF Scampton. All three proceedings were joined and heard together. These proceedings were subject to a two-day final hearing commencing on October 31 2023. Judgement was received on December 4 2023, dismissing all applications by the three parties. This decision was appealed by all three parties.

In January 2024, BDC was made aware of plans to extend the 12-month temporary planning permission by another three years via a Special Development Order (SDO). BDC was given just seven working days to make representations on the planning application.

The SDO was laid before Parliament in April 2024, granting planning permission for the site to be used for asylum accommodation for a further three years with up to six months decommissioning.

In light of the announcement regarding the SDO, BDC took the decision to formally withdraw from the Appeal in May 2024. With the Appeal focusing on the use of Class Q and the interpretation of a national emergency, the Council felt these points were now academic as the formal SDO had replaced the Class Q permission.

In March 2023 it was BDC that established a multi-agency forum (MAF) that brought together all key stakeholders across public services alongside the Home Office and the site operator, chaired initially by the BDC Chief Executive then later co-chaired by BDC and the Director of Public Health at ECC.

The MAF proved crucial to ensuring that from the outset we had a collective view on how to mitigate the impact on local communities and to support service user’s needs.

Today, there have been more than 1,000 points of discussion raised in the MAF.

Safeguarding and welfare has been, and continues to be, one of the biggest oversights of the large sites project.

Safeguarding and supporting the welfare of people in asylum

The approach to Wethersfield has been to the detriment of asylum seekers hosted there. Any asylum seeker may have a range of needs that extend beyond the Home Office’s legal obligation to provide accommodation to those who would otherwise be destitute. Retrospective improvements to site conditions, such as meaningful activities, safeguarding and security provision, have only been possible through a multi-agency approach, as well inputs from as the community and voluntary sector. However, more than 18 months since the site went live, fundamental problems remain owing to the site’s scale and location.

For example, the large, single male cohort makes service users at Wethersfield particularly vulnerable to exploitation, a concern we feel has not been suitably addressed. BDC has raised concerns through the MAF and in a letter to the Home Secretary, that the counter–radicalisation programme, Prevent, is not given the prominence needed at the site and wider community. Despite stop-gap training by the police, we are concerned there is insufficient, continuous training of staff on site and feel the risks posed by tensions in the community are not addressed in a proactive manner.

Safeguarding policy procedures were inadequate for some time after the site became operational. Serious, systemic concerns took an unacceptable amount of time to rectify and were present more than a year after the site went live. Problems included a lack of transparency reporting incidents to MAF partners, the lack of a single and clear process of safeguarding notifications among stakeholders, as well as the general quality of recruitment and training by the site provider. The fact ECC was the safeguarding lead agency had to be constantly reiterated to the Home Office, with adult social care colleagues writing to the Home Office seeking assurances around safeguarding policy procedure.

Following the HO attending the Essex Adult Safeguarding Board (ESAB) in July 2024, a safeguarding concerns action plan was put in place, along with workshops and reviews taking place of the ESAB guidance.

These failings were partially reflected in the May 2024 Doctors of the World (DOTW) report regarding what they felt was a mental health crisis at Wethersfield. The NGO hosted a medical facility outside the site’s gates from November 2023 until December 2024, assisting asylum seekers with their safeguarding referrals.

It was proposed that a set of measurables for the MAF in terms of mental health was implemented – FOIs revealed statistics members were unaware of.

An asylum seeker with an infectious disease may be required to isolate to ensure that they do not pass their infection to others on site, or to the wider community. The design of the site incorporates an entire isolation block with single use self-contained flats. Where an asylum seeker does not comply with isolation requirements the Local Authority (in this case BDC) may apply to the courts for a Part 2A order ((The Health Protection Regulations 2010).  If the order if granted the service user will be instructed by the court to isolate at an address specified on the order for a specified period of time.

Whilst the Local Authority and UKHSA are comfortable with the process for applying for a part 2A order there is concern over the practicalities of how to ensure that the Asylum seeker is kept in isolation.  The Local Authority have no powers in this respect.  Section 45O of the Public Health (control of Communicable Diseases) Act 1984 covers enforcement of the Act and outlines an offence if a person fails to comply with a restriction or requirement imposed by or under a Part 2A order.

The Home Office and their contractors assert that they have no powers to require a service user to remain in an isolation room; contrary to the police view that they have common law powers to enact this.

Section 45O allows a constable to take the person into custody and return the person to the place specified for isolation – however the Police assert that this power can be used if the service user leaves the site, but not whilst they remain on site.

Keeping a service user isolated at an alternative address, e.g. a hospital may not be appropriate if nursing care is not required, particularly when a purpose designed room is available on site. To ‘block’ a bed in this way seems unnecessary, expensive and removes an available bed from use by the wider public.

The Local Authority is currently trying to work with the HO to resolve this issue before a situation arises where a part 2A order needs to be applied for.

It became clear as the asylum centre became more established, there was an acute need for meaningful activities at this isolated location where men could expect to be accommodated for up to nine months. They had nothing to do.

BDC agreed with the HO to fund a pilot for discretionary activities on site at a cost of £50,000 – designed to be a stopgap pending the HO and the operator accepting more ownership of the issue. BDC funded art therapy workshops, sports sessions and materials for the volunteer-run English conversational classes. Feedback suggested these activities contributed significantly to site wellbeing. An activities co-ordinator is now in position, but the lack of meaningful activities for service users, largely owing to the site location, continues to be a concern today.

Managing and sharing data

There has been a clear preference for verbal updates rather than data sharing in regards to Wethersfield, which impacts stakeholder’s ability to assist – as well as hold the HO to account. Stakeholders on the MAF have made numerous requests for data, including basic management information from the HO - for example to understand the off-flow numbers of service users - but this has not been shared. Similarly, the current site population, number of onsite security and medical incidents, safeguarding referrals, site demographics and the numbers travelling by HO transport to nearby towns are not shared with the MAF. One MAF action requesting greater information sharing with stakeholders has been outstanding for almost a year.

Information is shared on what can only be described as a ‘need to know’ basis by the HO. The overwhelming feeling by partners locally is that the HO does not consider they need to know anything more than very limited information and there is not routine sharing of data, nor has a data sharing agreement been put in place.

The impact of current arrangements for asylum accommodation on local areas

The Home Office’s engagement and joint working with local authorities, local health services, NGOs and other local partners

The lack of engagement with the local community and partners as Wethersfield went operational was inadequate for such a large and sensitive project.

In March 2025 it will be two years since the site was first announced. Much of that time has been characterised by a lack of communication and a lack of trust. This, along with the inevitable issues of building such a large, untested project in a very rural area unsuitable for such purpose, has directly contributed to subsequent issues that have arisen.

It soon became clear that the project had serious failings that had been unaccounted for and the site appeared to lurch from one crisis to another.

One such example evidenced earlier was it emerged the HO hadn’t provided the men with anything meaningful to do on site. Unable to work, stuck on the site for up to nine months and the threat of deportation to Rwanda, site unrest and welfare concerns intensified. BDC intervened to fund £50,000 of discretionary activities to address the acute situation.

As partners, it has felt like have been constantly reacting to latest situation, dealing with concerns ranging from internet access, meal arrangements, security, infection prevention, clothing, safeguarding and addressing community concerns. It has detracted from the wider, more meaningful support for integration.

Today, through the work of the MAF, there is a good working relationship between local partners, the Home Office site operational team and the contractor, Clearsprings Ready Homes. Local partners have been listened to and significant improvements have been made to the day-to-day running of the asylum centre. This has aided community integration, but only after many months of discord.

A collaborative approach with local partners, including NGOs, needs to be established at the earliest opportunity when considering future accommodation.

There needs to be trust in the process in order to find sustainable and cohesive solutions, which build on existing community strengths. Proactive and reactive communications with the wider community have been consistently inadequate.

Factual inaccuracies in publications or media outlets are rarely, if ever challenged. Numerous examples have been highlighted of inaccurate and misleading journalism. Such articles remain online and misinform the public, feeding into an anti-asylum sentiment. On a local level at least, this has served to fracture the community.

This is compounded by the lack of proactive information released regarding the site. For example, a ‘monthly’ HO newsletter regarding the site, which included contributions from partners, was started in December 2023. Since that date, there have been six updates, the last coming in August 2024. Often, the content is sanitised of any useful information to be of little value in promoting community cohesion and understanding. Social media dis/misinformation is also rife.

BDC is the recipient of the Large Sites and Vessels grant, which provides £3,500 to the authority per bed occupied at Wethersfield at any one time.

It is intended primarily to fund the statutory responsibilities of BDC and ECC, along with anything else “in agreement with the Home Office”.

However, the funding instructions of the grant are confidential, despite being largely similar to the standard Asylum Dispersal Grant funding instruction. It has caused a great deal of suspicion among the local community. This was combined with a lack of clear communication from the Home Office to the public on what the grant was for.

There have also been considerable problems in accessing the grant for non-statutory purposes. When BDC identified an acute need for discretionary activities on (addressing the lack of provision by the Home Office and site operator) a £50,000 grant was quickly approved. However, it took more than 14 months to persuade the HO to unlock any spending off-site, on projects designed to aid integration and cohesion with the community.

One example was Wethersfield Museum being evicted from the premises of the then-owner the Ministry of Defence in July 2022. A key concern highlighted by the community, it had been hoped that the museum could return to the site alongside the asylum centre.

After more than a year of seemingly entertaining the idea, the Home Office ruled the museum would not be able to return and no tours would be permitted while part of the site was being used as an asylum centre.

This delay was compounded by BDC being unable to allocate grant monies to the museum without the HO’s permission; a small grant was finally approved in December 2024, 18 months after the site went live.

As the grant was largely based on the standard Asylum Dispersal Grant, it was not properly formulated to support those authorities with a Large Site situated within their borders. The uncertainty of future occupation levels, along with the potential for surge peaks, means that it is necessary to hold funding as a contingency rather than it being utilised to offset the impact of the site.

Feb 2025