Home Office admits migrant site is still being used for UK defence operations

A former RAF base that is housing asylum seekers is still being used for British defence operations, i can reveal.

A Ministry of Defence (MoD) data centre, communications tower and office remain active at the Wethersfield base, which is currently housing around 540 asylum seekers.

Operations will continue to be active at the base for a further year, according to a now-deleted Home Office assessment of the site. The exact nature of the defence work taking place there is unclear.

The revelation appears to contradict previous statements from the Home Office which claimed the “former” MoD site was being used for asylum seekers after it “became surplus to defence requirements”.

It also raises potential security questions about the running of possibly sensitive defence operations from accommodation sites housing hundreds of foreign nationals who have not yet had their asylum claims granted.

The Home Office does not comment on the operation of the site and defence matters. The MoD said it did not have anything to add.

In its description of the base, the Home Office Equalities Impact Assessment states: “There are three MoD retained areas consisting of a data centre, communications tower and office space which will continue in MoD use until 2025.”

At the time of the assessment – December 2023 – there had been 11 recorded policing “incidents” at the site, but the nature of these is not clear.

The site’s security provisions include internal and external patrols and a sign-in process for visitors.

The assessment, which i has seen, said the security plans include “monitoring of and responding to the alarms on MoD retained assets”.

It was published online late on Thursday night and deleted on Friday morning after being “published in error”.

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Another Equalities Impact Assessment into the Bibby Stockholm barge – which found that the use of the barge was discriminatory on the grounds age and sex, but that this was justified as a “proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim” – was also deleted on Friday.

The site was the headquarters of the Ministry of Defence Police (MDP), which is a national civilian police force serving the MoD, other UK government departments and UK Nato partners based in the UK. Most MDP officers are deployed as Authorised Firearms Officers.

The MDP’s headquarters were due to be moved to RAF Wyton in Cambridgeshire by late 2021, with training facilities also moved by early 2022. The MDP departed from RAF Wethersfield in early 2023, according to the assessment.

The Wethersfield site was due for “disposal” by 2025, the MoD said.

Home Secretary James Cleverly said last month that he wanted to “close down the asylum centre as soon as practicable”.

Mr Cleverly has voiced opposition to the Home Office’s use of the site, which falls within his Braintree constituency, saying it was too remote and isolated to be “appropriate” for asylum accommodation.

Previously, i revealed that a 999 call was made from the base nearly every day last month, on average, with nearly 30 ambulance calls in as many days.

The nature of the emergencies is not clear, but one charity warned that some asylum seekers have tried to take their own lives at the Essex accommodation and that mental health problems were widespread.

One person staying at the site told the BBC last week that there had been “almost nightly fighting” between men at the centre.