How John Healey's £150m grant could help turn North Yorkshire RAF base into asylum camp
The North Yorkshire village of Linton-on-Ouse has been highlighted by the Home Office to turn the former RAF base into an asylum camp.
John Healey has said the £150m in the Budget to turn former military sites into migrant camps, which could include RAF Linton-on-Ouse, will make a “big difference” to closing asylum hotels in his own constituency of Rotherham.
The Chancellor allocated the money in Wednesday’s statement for the next financial year to turn a “handful of army sites” into asylum camps.
The Home Office declined to say which former military bases the funds would be used on, however it appears the Government’s ambition is to use it to transform the former RAF base in the small North Yorkshire village of Linton-on-Ouse.
Earlier in the year, it was listed as one of three former Ministry of Defence sites, where the Government was applying for planning permission to turn them into asylum centres.
This would see it house around 1,300 migrants which is roughly double the size of Linton-on-Ouse, even though a similar proposal in 2022 failed on technical grounds.
Mr Healey told GB News: “There's a handful of army sites that we're making available to the Home Office for asylum seekers.
“The reason we're doing that is we want to close all asylum hostels before the end of this Parliament. We're already down to 160.
“This is the way that we can deal with asylum seekers in a better way, we can close the hostels, and we can make sure that when we assess them more rapidly, those that have got no right to stay here are then removed from the country, just as we're doing now at a higher rate.”
The Rawmarsh and Conisbrough MP said this would make “a big difference to many communities at the moment that have got hotels used for asylum seekers”.
“I know what it's like in our part of Rotherham. Our one hotel in the constituency was an asylum hotel.
“People wanted it back for their friends and families. It's now returned to a regular hotel, and people are using it for weekend events. They're visiting their relatives."
A number of hotels in Mr Healey’s constituency have stopped housing asylum seekers, including the Holiday Inn in Manvers which was caught up in the 2024 riots.
It is unclear which hotel the Chancellor was referring to.
In Linton-on-Ouse, residents have been protesting, saying the village does not have the amenities or the infrastructure to cope with an influx of that size.
Children are already being pulled out of the local primary school, while there are fears houses are being pushed into negative equity.
Prof Olga Matthias, spokesperson for the Linton-on-Ouse Action Group, told The Yorkshire Post: “It’s not a thought through policy for the nation, it’s not a thought through policy for value for money for the taxpayer.
“It’s simply a knee-jerk reaction giving us more of the same, and costing us a lot more money.”
Prof Matthias said that the campaign group’s attempts to meet with the Home Secretary or other Home Office ministers, and show them Linton-on-Ouse, had been ignored.
“All of this hugely contradicts the ‘I’m a listening Prime Minister’ Andy Burnham - he’s not listening to us.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “This government is working on a fairer distribution of asylum accommodation across the country, with £1bn saved in costs since the election.
"This includes closing all asylum hotels and moving to alternative accommodation, including former military sites, which are designed to be self-contained to reduce the impact on local communities.”