Resource

The Helen Bamber Foundation welcomes the High Court’s judgment finding that the Home Secretary acted unlawfully in accommodating victims of trafficking, torture and other extreme human cruelty in RAF Wethersfield. The three claimants in the legal challenge all suffered a significant decline in their mental health as a result of living at Wethersfield. It is shocking that the site remains open given the wealth of evidence showing more widely the serious harm that has been caused to men forced to live there.  

Since Wethersfield was opened over 18 months ago, the Helen Bamber Foundation has repeatedly raised concerns, based on our clinicians' medical assessments, that using an ex-miliary site as asylum accommodation was causing a significant deterioration in the mental and physical health of hundreds of men. In 2024, we revealed that increasing numbers of men were self-harming and attempting suicide.   

Men seeking asylum forced to live in the Wethersfield include survivors of torture and trafficking, who have experience great trauma. They are extremely isolated, forced to share rooms, unable to access vital services and feel like they are in an 'open prison'. Growing feelings of desperation on site have resulted in rising tensions and risk of violence. Helen Bamber Foundation has worked with many men who became too scared to leave their rooms. We are also concerned about a lack of access to legal advice at the site - men are having to attend asylum interviews having never spoken to a lawyer. 

Not only did the Home Office continue to move more people into Wethersfield, but it also amended its ‘Allocation of Asylum Accommodation’ policy, making it much harder to move vulnerable people out of the site. The High Court has held that the Home Secretary had made “a most serious and inexplicable omission” in failing to assess the equalities impact when amending its asylum accommodation policy. The effect of which was that vulnerable asylum seekers with special needs or disabilities may be judged suitable to be accommodated at Wethersfield. 

Shortly before the general election, the now Prime Minister Keir Starmer committed to closing Wethersfield and the government has already stopped using the Bibby Stockholm barge, abandoned plans for a site in RAF Scampton, and committed to closing Napier Barracks. Yet it continues to keep Wethersfield open in the face of overwhelming medical evidence of the harm is causes, and the staggering amount of money it costs.  

Kamena Dorling, Director of Policy, said:   

“Wethersfield is both cruel and costly and should never have been used. Placing people in camp accommodation on ex-military sites causes has caused profound and long-lasting additional trauma to people who have already experienced conflict, oppression, abuse, torture and trafficking.  

The government must close the site immediately and act on the commitment made by Prime Minister Keir Starmer before the general election in July. If asylum claims are processed fairly and quickly there is no reason not to move to a system where people seeking protection are treated humanely and housed in communities, not camps.”  

Press contact: kennith.rosario@helenbamber.org or media@helenbamber.org