Campsfield - Oxfordshire expansion 'unprecedented' debate - EUROPE SAYS
Cherwell District Councilplanning committee held a debate on Thursday, July 23, on the Home Office’s plans to more than double the number of spaces at Campsfield House Immigration Removal Centre (IRC), but. . .
Cherwell District Councilplanning committee held a debate on Thursday, July 23, on the Home Office’s plans to more than double the number of spaces at Campsfield House Immigration Removal Centre (IRC), but did not have typical local authority powers to reject the proposal. Campsfield House has seen repeated protests, including hunger strikes, a closure and reopening, with human rights campaigners warning it “rips apart families and destroys lives” and alleging detainee “slave labour”. In 2024, ahead of its reopening, Cherwell passed a motion calling Campsfield House “a stain on our district” – it called on the Government to “abandon ” its plans and “develop a more humane migration policy”. The facility near Kidlington currently has 160 bed spaces for detained men, and the government is planning to increase this to 400, with a further 240 beds. (Image: Contributed)It is used to detain people who are “subject to immigration control, including those who may pose heightened risk” – this includes people with criminal records, “present criminality-related risks” and “failed asylum seekers”, according to the plans. The Home Office is using the Crown Planning Route to seek approval for the expansion due to its national security implications. This procedure is also being used for its Bicester MOD immigration centre plans. It means Cherwell, which separately has its powers over major planning applications suspended, cannot determine whether plans go ahead, and can only act as a consultee, making a recommendation based on the limited information shared by the government in the application due to “security sensitivity”. Planning officer Rob Duckworth noted most of the internal drawings have been “blacked out” for this reason. At the planning meeting, Cherwell councillors decided to share an ‘objection unless’ to the plans with a number of conditions – including requests for safeguarding measures for LGBT detainees and those without criminal convictions as well as policing assurances in the case of escapees. The 2024 council motion of objection to Campsfield House is set to be used as a prefix in the response sent to the planning inspectorate. This was in part to address points raised by councillor Douglas Webb (Conservative), who wanted the response to recognise that local residents did not ‘want the site in the first place’, let alone an expanded one, and councillor David Hingley (Lib Dem), who added “referencing concerns of residents is something we should be doing as a council”. There were questions about a “234 per cent” rise in parking in the plans from councillor Ian Harwood (Conservative), which he suggested would likely not be deemed acceptable “if this was an industrial plant or a retail outlet”. Planning officer Rob Duckworth, who had called the situation “a little bit unprecedented”, described how other organisations were struggling to put forward their responses. He said authorities, including National Highways, which wanted to put in a holding objection, have been saying “we don’t know how to respond because there is not enough information”. Councillor Besmira Brasha (Labour) described the application as having “a lot of holes in it”. Mr Duckworth explained a planning balance would lean towards approval due to national data on the need for the centre, and the fact there is an existing site.