Linton-on-Ouse: residents urge Asylum Minister to visit village of planned asylum camp

The Home Office has pledged to close asylum hotels and is looking to move migrants into former Ministry of Defence sites across the country.

One of those is RAF Linton-on-Ouse which is embedded in the small village of 650 people, near York, of the same name.

The Government has applied for planning permission to house around 1,300 migrants at the site, even though a similar proposal in 2022 failed on technical grounds.

Residents have invited the Border Security and Asylum Minister Anna Turley to visit the village, so they can show her the impact the proposal is having.

Children are being pulled out of the local primary school, while there are fears houses are being pushed into negative equity.

When contacted by The Yorkshire Post, the Home Office declined to say whether Ms Turley would visit.

Her Redcar and Cleveland constituency is not far from the North Yorkshire village.

The letter says: “Our message is simple: this is the wrong plan in the wrong place.

“We respectfully invite you to visit Linton-on-Ouse, walk through our village, see the former RAF base and meet the people who would live alongside this proposed centre.

“This is not the first time you have been asked to engage directly over Linton on Ouse. We understand that North Yorkshire Councillor Malcolm Taylor and Rachael Maskell MP have both invited you to visit Linton on Ouse and see the site for yourself.

“Rachael Maskell has also written to you to make the case for reconsidering the proposal.

“To date, however, no ministerial visit has followed. We therefore renew that invitation publicly and respectfully ask you to respond to it.

“This is not a distant or impractical invitation. As the Member of Parliament for Redcar, your constituency is only around an hour’s drive from RAF Linton-on-Ouse.

“The community affected by this proposal is, quite literally, close to home. We hope you will therefore make the short journey to see for yourself the place about which such significant decisions may soon be made.”

The letter questions comments made by Ms Turley around middle class areas housing asylum seekers as a matter of “fairness”.

It asks whether it is fair for the small village to be asked to take around 1,200 migrants, over four times the amount housed in her Redcar and Cleveland constituency.

“If 275 people across Redcar and Cleveland represents a ‘fair share’, we respectfully ask how a concentration of up to 1,200 people at Linton can be described in the same terms,” the letter adds.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The concerns of communities are central to our immigration reforms. That is why we are closing every asylum hotel and moving asylum seekers into alternative accommodation, including former military sites.

"We are working to fairly house asylum seekers across the country, engaging with local authorities to reduce the impact on communities, and we have saved taxpayers over £1bn on asylum support costs since the election."

The spokesperson said the Home Office would respond to the letter in due course.