High Court to hear application by council for full injunction over Home Office plan to house asylum seekers at disused airfield

The High Court has agreed to hear next week Braintree District Council’s application for a full injunction over Home Office plans to accommodate asylum seekers at an airbase.

The local authority said it had initially applied to the High Court for an interim injunction, but the judge assigned to the case decided that the hearing could wait to be heard after the Easter Court recess.

A Braintree spokesperson said it then secured an agreement from the High Court for an application for a full injunction to be heard on 19th April, rather than for an interim injunction as originally planned.

The Home Office has agreed not to move asylum seekers on to the airfield at Wethersfield until after the hearing and only if it succeeds in defending its position.

Braintree vowed to challenge the decision immediately following the Home Office's announcement of the plan late last month (29 March).

The Home Office seeks to use the site in Essex alongside two other sites in Lincolnshire and East Sussex to provide accommodation to several thousand asylum seekers.

It is also set to use a barge in Dorset to accommodate around 500 people under the plans, in a bid to move away from the current policy of housing asylum seekers in hotels, which is reported to cost £6m a day.

Despite the upcoming injunction hearing and its agreement to hold off on moving asylum seekers onto the Essex site, the Home Office has begun preparing the airfield for asylum seekers.

A statement issued by Braintree on 6 April noted: "Whilst this means that our legal action has not yet stopped the Home Office from starting to prepare the site for asylum seeker accommodation, our court hearing will provide an opportunity for the issues to be fully considered and for a determination to be given by the High Court on the legalities of the proposal."

Braintree said it had also received an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) screening direction in response to requests for more information on the proposals.

According to Braintree, the direction states that the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (SSLUHC) does not consider that the potential environmental impact of an asylum centre being established at Wethersfield Airfield would not constitute development that would require an EIA and that therefore there is no need for a full Environmental Impact Assessment to be carried out.

West Lindsey District also announced legal action after the Home Office's original announcement, noting that it had put measures in place to "issue an immediate judicial review and injunction" over plans to accommodate asylum seekers on a site at RAF Scampton.

The Lincolnshire council sent a pre-action protocol letter a week after Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick's announcement.

Adam Carey