West Lindsey District Council fighting for RAF Scampton
The former air base was listed as one of three other sites that will be used as an asylum seeker centre.
West Lindsey District Council will look to fight the decision to house asylum seekers at RAF Scampton by taking legal action.
The Government confirmed yesterday that they will house asylum seekers in Lincolnshire, at the former RAF Scampton site. It's part of a wider strategy to move away from using the likes of hotels.
In Lincolnshire alone, there are several hotels being used to house asylum seekers, including five hotels in Skegness, one in Boston and another in South Kesteven.
The use of hotels was a move by Serco, the government contractor responsible for housing asylum seekers.
Now, the Government are looking for an alternative which could be military sites, boats or barges.
West Lindsey District Council's Director of Planning, Regeneration & Communities, Sally Grindrod-Smith reassured that the investment plan still stands at this time:
"At this moment in time, no, the deal is not off.
"As you will have heard, the Minister has committed in Parliament today to working with West Lindsey District Council to secure the future of the site.
"In my mind, we now wait for the Home Office and we push them to confirm details of exactly what that deal may look like. We've had nothing from them with any of that information as of yet. So no, as it stands, the Council is continuing to work with Scampton Holdings Limited and we believe there is still a future for that deal that will require the government to reconsider utilisation of the site for asylum provision."
She added that when further detail is revealed the council have plans:
"A a council, we are considering all legal options and are open to it. We have the resources and the approvals in place to take legal action.
"We are still waiting for the Home Office to respond to a number of questions that we've put to them, which will help us to shape and inform our position, but we are considering all legal options, including urgent judicial review proceedings."
Overall, Sally says the council are "really disappointed and devastated" with this decision and reiterated that they have been working with the community for this deal:
"We made our announcement and it was something that we'd worked with our community on for more than four years through the statutory planning process, developing a planning policy which looks to protect, preserve and enhance RAF Scampton for the future.
"We'd put lots of time and effort in to creating that deal and then just as we were making that announcement, the government announced opposing plans.
"So the the sense of potential loss is huge in the community and Lincolnshire is huge at the moment."
The Council first announced it had an investment partner, Scampton Holdings Limited on March 6th this year.
Just a day later, the Home Office revealed it was looking at Scampton as a potential place to house asylum seekers.
The council also revealed a £300 million investment package this month, that would look to preserve heritage, introduce education and commercial activity, such as aerospace and aviation while creating hospitality and tourism.
Peter Hewitt is the Chairman of Scampton Holdings Limited. He shares that
"We've obviously been working on this project together with West Lindsey District Council for some five years now.
"We've been working hard to deliver the responses that we have and, when we heard two weeks ago that we had won the competitive tender and the day after we heard that the Home Office was going to put 1,500 migrants on the site... we had just 24 hours of joy and then, since then, we've had heartache and a lot of a lot of anxiety obviously."
He added that "the battle's not over yet" and said the investment deal relies a lot of what the Home Office reveal in the details:
"It depends on where the Home Office want to locate the migrants, and we have been talking urgently internally, and there are some possibilities to where they could be housed. But all of this has got to be discussed, because if we're to run and continue to run airside operations, they've obviously got to be at a safe distance, and they've got to not be capable of wandering onto the airfield.
"As an entrepreneur, I am an optimist, so we hope it is going to all work out. I think what we would like to see is the government reaching out to West Lindsey and ourselves, and actually have a discussion as to how this might all work together."
The Immigration Minister and Newark MP, Robert Jenrick made the announcement in the Commons at lunchtime yesterday, where he said he is "continuing to explore the possibility" of using ferries and barges to reduce the "eye watering" reliance on hotels:
"Accommodation for migrants should meet their essential living needs and nothing more.
"Because we cannot risk becoming a magnet for the millions of people who are displaced and seeking better economic prospects."
Despite opposition from within the Cabinet, he confirmed that up to 3,700 people will be housed at RAF Wethersfield in Essex and RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire, with an extra 1,200 going to a separate site in East Sussex.
Charities have criticised the move as "grossly inadequate" to house people who've fled war.
Gainsborough MP Sir Edward Leigh also expressed his concerns to the Prime Minister earlier this week, and said to Jenrick, using the former home of the Dambusters RAF squadron could jeopardise the £300 million regeneration project:
"I can inform him that the moment this is confirmed the local authority in West Lindsey will issue an immediate judicial review and injunction against this thoroughly bad decision which is not based on good governance but the politics of trying to do something."
Alex Fraser, the British Red Cross's UK director for refugee support, also said, the proposed sites are "entirely inappropriate for people and will lead to significant suffering":
"Military sites, by their very nature, can re-traumatise people who have fled war and persecution. These sites may also put vulnerable people at risk of exploitation," he added.