The Home Office insists no decision has yet been taken.
RAF Barnham is being considered for a new asylum centre (Image: Getty)
A migrant camp for up to 931 asylum seekers is planned at a former RAF base near Thetford. The plan has sparked anger over the £3.4million being spent on the project before a final decision has been made. The Home Office has hired construction giant Kier to draw up detailed plans for the proposed camp at RAF Barnham, a former nuclear weapons store on the Norfolk-Suffolk border. The contract, signed in October but published this week, is worth £3,400,411.27 and covers what the department describes as “Refurbishment and Modular Solutions” at the site. The Home Office insists no decision has yet been taken.
The plans have faced opposition from residents, with protests held outside the former military base.
The government intends to use the Urgent Crown Development process, a fast-track planning route which bypasses the local council. However, no planning application for the site has yet been published.
The proposed camp is among three former military bases being considered to accommodate asylum seekers as ministers seek to move away from hotel-based accommodation.
Scott Hussey, a Reform UK cabinet member at Norfolk County Council, criticised the spending and called on the Home Office to reveal the expected overall cost.
He said: “The Home Office has already handed aptly-named Kier Construction £3.4 million just for design work and this is before a single brick has been laid or portacabin installed.
“The real refurbishment bill is still to come and could come in at tens of millions of pounds.
“Successive governments have never found enough money to give our own armed forces decent accommodation – including when this site was used by the RAF – yet for illegal immigrant accommodation the money flows freely.
“We deserve to know the full cost before any decision is made.”
Protest march in Thetford against use of RAF Barnham for asylum seekers (Image: Getty)
Helen Beck, chairwoman of the Barnham Residents Association, said locals were “hugely disappointed” by the decision to spend money drawing up plans before the site’s suitability had been established.
She said: “The fact that the government is happy to spend £3.4m drawing up a scheme – that at the moment they don’t even know whether it can legally go ahead – is hugely disappointing.”
A Home Office spokesman said: “The government is working on a fairer distribution of asylum accommodation across the country, with over £1 billion saved in costs since the election.
“This includes closing all asylum hotels and moving to alternative accommodation, including former military sites.
“These are designed to be self-contained, with 24/7 security and CCTV, to minimise the impact on the local community.”