Legal challenge over plan to use military camp as asylum accommodation dismissed

A residents’ group has lost a bid to bring a High Court challenge against the Home Office after it announced proposals to use a military training camp as accommodation for asylum seekers.

Crowborough Shield, a community interest company, took legal action against the Government after it announced it was considering housing up to 540 men at the site in East Sussex in October.

The Home Office decided to proceed with the plan in January, with 27 men housed at the camp last month despite protests in the town and opposition from Wealden District Council.

Crowborough Shield began legal action in December, before the decision to go ahead with the plan had been made.

At a hearing on Wednesday, barristers for the group said the claim “challenged the process for the authorisation” of the “unlawful” decision, and asked a judge to allow it to proceed to a full hearing.

The Home Office defended the challenge, with its lawyers telling the hearing in London that the bid was “misconceived” and “premature”.

In a ruling on Friday, Mr Justice Mould said the challenge “is indeed premature” as at the time legal action was launched, there was “no clearly determined policy to use the camp” as accommodation for asylum seekers.

The judge continued that the challenge was “based on a series of assumptions and, to a significant degree, speculative”, adding that the group had “jumped the gun”.

He also said that once the Home Office had made its decision in January, the legal claim “should have been discontinued”, and he could “form no real understanding as to why it was not done”.

But he continued that the department’s January decision was “at least in principle” open to a legal challenge.

He said: “There would be no real prejudice to the claimant, or any other putative claimants, in bringing judicial review proceedings against the actual decision made.”

The Government also announced last year that it planned to use Cameron Barracks in Inverness in the Highlands to house asylum seekers as it sought to end the use of hotels.

The Crowborough site, which has been given to the Home Office by the Ministry of Defence for 12 months, was previously used to accommodate Afghan families evacuated during the withdrawal from Kabul in 2021 while they were resettled elsewhere.

In January, the Home Office said the site has 24/7 security with CCTV and strict sign-in processes for residents who have to complete health and police checks before arrival.

Data released by the department on Thursday showed that the number of asylum seekers temporarily housed in UK hotels has fallen to its lowest level for 18 months.

There were 30,657 people staying in such accommodation while awaiting a decision on their asylum claims at the end of December, a 15% drop from the previous quarter.

The number of people in so-called contingency accommodation other than hotels had also fallen to its lowest level since the end of December 2022, with 2,010 in this accommodation, which could include barracks, at the end of December.

Other Government data showed a fall in the number of people applying for asylum in the UK and that the asylum backlog had dropped to its lowest level in more than five years.