Bexhill Residents Call On Home Office For Clarity Over Northeye Asylum Centre

Rother councillors have pledged to press the Home Office to engage with residents on its plans for an asylum centre in Little Common. 

On Monday (September 18), Rother District Council debated a petition connected with plans to house asylum seekers at Northeye, a disused prison and training centre.

Petitioners were represented at the meeting by Nigel Jacklin, a Bexhill town councillor and leader of the No to Northeye protest group.

Mr Jacklin said:

“Illegal arrivals to the UK are a concern to many people here in Rother and across the UK. The government and the Home Office have failed to stop arrivals and to process applications in good time. 

“These failures have led to the introduction of new emergency legislation, allowing the Home Office to ride roughshod over local planning and impose site use without consultation or due consideration. This is all wrong.

“The residents do not want it, the camp, and the majority don’t want them, people who arrive illegally. While we realise that these issues are not within your control, your reaction to the proposals are. You have acknowledged concerns but remained corporately silent. 

“Residents simply want to know, do you oppose the proposals? Or do you want to take the money and build the camp, whether that be as a detention centre or as open accommodation?”

Mr Jacklin went on to set out the campaign’s three requests for Rother District Council. They were for the local authority to: publicly place on record its opposition to the plans; set up a system for resident’s to share the views on the plans; and begin campaigning on the government’s use of emergency legislation. 

These requests were echoed, but not precisely copied, by a motion put forward for debate by council leader Doug Oliver (Ind).

Cllr Oliver’s motion called on the council to commit to using all its powers to press the Home Office to both provide full details of precisely what it is proposing for the site and ensure it engages fully with all stakeholders and attends all liaison meetings.

The motion also called on the council to state its full commitment to ensuring any use of the site is “lawful and acceptable in planning terms, in regard to the local plan, national planning policy and other material planning considerations.”

Introducing this motion, Cllr Oliver warned councillors to be careful to avoid ‘pre-determination’ of future proposals. Not doing so, he said, could result in members being barred from decision-making later in the process.

He said:

“There is an awful lot we still don’t know. We don’t know if the site will be used as a detained or a non-detained facility, or even if it will be used at all. 

“We do not know how many people will be accommodated, we do not know who will be accommodated, we do not know when work will begin on the site … how long it will take and what kind of accommodation will be built. 

“We do not know if Rother District Council … will be determining any future planning application about the site and we do not know how long the facility will be used for or what will happen to the site in the longer term.”

While Cllr Oliver’s motion was unanimously backed by councillors, several members took the opportunity to criticise the government’s handling of the proposals.  

Among them was Labour councillor Christine Bayliss, one of the council’s two deputy leaders. She said:

“The Labour Party’s opposition to using Northeye as an accommodation or detention centre is well known, but I am open-minded and will weigh up all the arguments for and against should the planning application be submitted by the Home Office.”

She added:

“But I do oppose a government and a Home Office that on one hand wants to work with Rother District Council, but then withholds information and cancels meetings at the last minute. 

“I do oppose an MP who promises to hold a public meeting, but doesn’t then jumps the gun by making announcements which are not backed up by the very government he is supposed to be part of. 

“And I very definitely oppose those who seek to prey on people’s fears and advance a right-wing agenda. The sort of people who email me to suggest that I should go and hang myself, [who] want to stifle democracy and bring shame on our country.”

Criticism of the government’s asylum policy was also offered by Liberal Democrat Susan Prochak, the council’s other deputy leader and Polly Gray, leader of the council’s Green Party group. 

Cllr Carl Maynard, leader of the council’s Conservative group, meanwhile, called on councillors to avoid an ‘emotive’ response to the issue. 

He said:

“I think it is for us as elected members to listen to our residents, but to acknowledge that this issue is a much wider issue that affects us as a country and make a measured response and to avoid the kind of emotive stuff that we’ve seen on social media and elsewhere in the national newspapers.

“I think it is something [where] there will quite clearly be differences of opinion, but in terms of how we react to this particular situation, it is about taking a sensible measured approach. 

“That is what we will continue to do on this side of the chamber and I welcome the comments that have been made by Cllr Oliver and we will support the proposition that he has put in terms of the motion, so hopefully we can have unanimity in this chamber moving forward on this matter.”