IN LATE March 2023 residents of Bexhill-on-Sea, a small town in East Sussex, heard that the Home Office were proposing to use a site on the outskirts to build an asylum-seeker accommodation centre. Northeye, a disused prison, would house 1,200 adult males.
Residents immediately set up the ‘No To Northeye’ group. After they had campaigned for 20 months, the Home Office announced they would not be using the site prior to a public inquiry this month. That inquiry has just concluded with the decision to abandon Northeye because, the Home Office explained, of difficulties getting it operational in time. A change in government policy to use a larger number of smaller sites means they are unlikely in future to buy sites such as Northeye. That change of policy comes on the back of the huge and determined protests run by local residents that I was centrally involved with.
For the moment Bexhill is safe and successfully saying no to Northeye is a testament to the power of organised peaceful protest.
Northeye started life as an RAF radar station and in 1969 it became an open prison which closed in 1992 following riots and a fire. It was bought by the United Arab Emirates for military training and accommodation but since 2010 it has been unoccupied. By 2023 it had been allocated to housing and recreation on the local council’s development plan. The Northeye estate, next to the site, comprises around 50 houses many of whose occupiers chose to live there for the peace, quiet and safety. You could hear the birds sing and let your kids go out on their bicycles.
The Illegal Migration Act of March 2023 smashed this sense of peace, quiet and safety. Purportedly to make provision for the removal of illegal immigrants from the United Kingdom, it also specified that people who were not granted legal status or removed, and whom the government does not detain, must be given accommodation.
Delays in processing asylum claims had already led to a spiralling need for accommodation with local hotels being used across the UK. As of March 2023, there were more than 108,000 people in various forms of asylum accommodation provided by the Home Office, of whom some 45,000 were in hotels. In an effort to end reliance on hotels, the government procured three accommodation vessels (including the Bibby Stockholm moored at Portland Port) under a contract worth almost £1.6billion. It also identified four land-based sites for possible use as asylum accommodation that collectively, could provide some 6,400 extra bedspaces. One of these was Northeye. The others were RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire, Wethersfield in Essex and Catterick in North Yorkshire.
The legislation allowed the Home Office to bypass local planning laws and work at pace to create accommodation for up to 1,500 men at any of these.
As soon as the news was out residents on the Northeye estate organised a public meeting to express their opposition, reported in these pages last year. This was well attended by locals who didn’t want the camp or the male illegals. A small group supporting asylum seekers also came along. Mostly from Brighton and Hastings, they were equipped with Socialist Worker placards. We arrived a little late by which time most of the pro-asylum seeker lot had disappeared following a minor scuffle in which one of their placards was broken. We had printed 100 ‘NO’ signs on the office printer. These featured in the live GB News coverage of the gathering and were then proudly displayed in people’s windows. Both local papers ran the story.
It became clear there were two camps of opinion. Ours wanted to make some noise; the others wanted to form a committee. People came forward and helped with a logo, T-shirts, videography and a Facebook page. My megaphone came in handy. Our campaign was under way.
A protest was organised for the day the BBC came to film Question Time at the De La Warr Pavilion (an iconic modernist building by the sea). Northeye was discussed: the first question referred to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s position that the illegal migration bill is ‘morally unacceptable and politically impractical’. While presenter Fiona Bruce acknowledged the strength of feelings and the protests outside, the ‘No to Northeye’ group felt that the BBC controlled the narrative.
Outside the De La Warr I asked the demonstrators what they wanted to do next. They said there should be a protest walk from Northeye into town. A Sussex Police officer came over and said we’d need to appoint a police liaison officer, explaining that if we were going to walk along the highway we’d need a police escort and people wearing hi-vis vests. Until this point our policy had been to keep the police at arm’s length. They had tried to stop a couple of people protesting before by giving them a Community Protection Warning Letter. Our position was ‘there is no organiser’ but I reluctantly agreed to be that police liaison officer and was for the next nine protests.
They were a popular success. At each the police noted the level of support evidenced from tooting car horns and thumbs-up from passers-by. They ran without serious incident, the only problems occurring when the far left turned up.
By this stage it was clear that the overwhelming majority of residents were on our side.
The need for a Judicial Review was raised. We obtained expert advice from two sources. The first was barrister Francis Hoar, who had worked on eight lockdown JRs (fighting emergency legislation). The second was from an environmental campaign group provided through an Independent Network contact. I had previously spoken to Francis about his experience of challenging emergency legislation. His advice was chilling but realistic. The summary of their advice on Northeye was that a JR could cost £200,000 or more (allowing for the risk of paying the other side’s costs) and would be 98 per cent likely to fail. On this basis we urged the local council to consider legal action joining in with other councils where appropriate. This sadly never materialised.
The March 2023 legislation impact plans were that asylum seekers would start arriving in September. There was some local scepticism about this as the site was run down and known to contain asbestos. When September came and work had not started on the site, it was announced that the original plans for open accommodation for 1,200 men would be replaced by a closed detention centre. While this arguably was not so bad, residents still didn’t want it. We petitioned the District Council asking them to oppose it; they refused to do so.
Our Conservative MP, Huw Merriman, a transport minister who had supported the proposal rather than listening to his constituents, held one public meeting on this issue, in January this year. We asked voters to write to him, saying that they had no confidence in him as our MP; hundreds did. He stepped down in advance of the July general election.
Throughout this time the Bexhill Observer followed the story featuring our work and photos and sharing our videos online. ITV and the BBC also interviewed us and ran the videos we’d made of the protests, their language changing over time, gradually reflecting the mainstream opposition to illegal immigration. I was a regular on Mike Graham’s Talk TV show, on local YouTuber Absolutely Average’s channel and I appeared on the Sonia Poulton show. Maintaining awareness of the campaign was important in keeping it going.
The main focus of this month’s public inquiry was the decision to purchase the site and the price paid following a critical National Audit Office (NAO) report. The Home Office had paid £15million for the site to private investors who had bought it for £6million the year before. Home Office Overpaid for HMP Northeye Asylum Camp in East Sussex While the NAO report noted the formation of a special purpose company by the investors (Brockwell Bexhill) in 2022 we had traced their interest in the site back to April 2021, when a different company was formed.
Finally, on Monday this week we asked our own District Council what they will say on behalf of residents when they meet the Home Office. The response was disappointing: ‘Until we know what the Home Office or the government are proposing to do, we can make no statement.’ It almost felt as if they were disappointed that the development wasn’t going ahead. There seems to be a steadfast refusal by those elected to represent us to acknowledge our views. At the meeting the Liberal Democrat council chair used his introductory speech to deride ‘populism’. When council leaders have the audacity to make such statements it really should be time for them to go.
