Why is the government housing asylum-seekers on old military bases?
The Home Office is pressing ahead with plans to house asylum-seekers on former military bases, including a site near the Oxfordshire village of Piddington. Locals are unhappy. The 400-strong community even held a symbolic independence referendum to make their point. Home Office minister Anna Turley confirmed the government would keep going with the policy, saying Ministry of Defence properties have facilities on site and are "more contained" (BBC News).
The Piddington site would hold more than 1,000 asylum-seekers. The village's parish council vice-chairman, Mike Nixon, is among those leading the resistance. In an unusual protest, Piddington held a symbolic vote asking residents whether they wanted to remain part of the United Kingdom. The gesture reflected how strongly people feel: the facility would more than triple the village's population (BBC News).
Piddington is one of three former military sites proposed in June 2026. The others are a former RAF base in Barnham, Suffolk, and RAF Linton-on-Ouse in North Yorkshire. The government has been working on this approach since at least March 2023, when Reuters reported that ministers were preparing to move migrants out of hotels and into military bases or disused ferries (Reuters.
Two military sites are already running. RAF Wethersfield in Essex and Crowborough Training Camp in East Sussex are both housing asylum-seekers. Wethersfield is getting bigger: in June 2026, the Home Office told Braintree Council the site's capacity would permanently rise from 800 to 1,245 places (Braintree District Council). Defence Secretary John Healey said in September 2025 that more military sites could be used, naming MDP Wethersfield and Napier Barracks in Kent as examples (BBC News).
At the same time, the government is closing hotels it had been using. Ministers announced that 13 more hotels across England had been shut. The Metropole hotel in Blackpool is one of them. The Home Office said the hotels had been "exited and handed back to local communities, ready to reopen their doors to the public" (Home Office.
The legal power behind this approach took effect on 2 June 2026. The Home Office began using a statutory power — a legal authority set out in law — to provide accommodation to asylum-seekers who are destitute or likely to become so, as set out in its published policy (gov.uk). The Home Office has said the military-site strategy is about ending reliance on hotels, with strict on-site security at the new facilities (Home Office, Facebook.
Other parties are pushing different ideas. On 3 August 2026, Reform UK proposed using the military to stop asylum-seekers arriving altogether — a much harder line than the government's plan to use military sites for housing (Reuters. Protests against housing asylum-seekers on former military sites have also taken place, with demonstrations recorded in England as recently as January 2026 (Reuters.
The broader context here is a government trying to show progress on two things at once. First, cutting the hotel bill, which has been politically damaging for years. Second, doing it through a model — large-scale housing on former military land — that causes its own problems. The hotel closures give ministers concrete results to point to. The military-site expansion, though, simply moves opposition from one place to another, shifting it from hotel-dependent communities to rural villages like Piddington.
For Westminster watchers, the direction is clear even if the politics remain unsettled. The Wethersfield expansion, the three new military sites proposed in June, and the steady closure of hotels all suggest the government is committed to this approach. Whether that commitment survives local resistance, legal challenges, or a change in how many people arrive is another matter. What is clear is that, for now, the government intends to hold this line.
