“Safety is the number one concern. This is a quiet Yorkshire village. The local primary school, really successful school, has seen the people wanted to come here have halved in the last hundred days. People are withdrawing their applications. People were coming originally because it’s a great primary school and it’s a great village and there’s a great ethos of care in this village, but now it’s a fear of people’s safety and incredibly, that they want to house illegal migrants next to a children’s playground.
“No parent is going to let their child go to that playground, and quite frankly, I’d be surprised if any mother either wanted to go there on their own. Security and safety. The Government just don’t seem to care.”
Sir Alec added emergency services, utility providers, local authorities, and Linton-on-Ouse residents have united to reject plans to use the former RAF base as an asylum centre in the village, as it lacks the infrastructure for such a huge influx of people.
Emergency services, utility providers, local authorities, and Linton-on-Ouse residents have united to reject plans to use the former RAF base as an asylum centre in the village.
Professor Olga Matthias is a spokesman for the Linton-on-Ouse Action Group. During the Conservative visit to the village, she told the People’s Channel: “We’ve been really fortunate in that four MPs have been able to visit the village today – we think any visit to the village brings home how unsuitable our village is for the proposed 1,200 asylum seekers that the current Government is wishing to place in the former base.
“We’ve invited members of the cabinet to visit too but they have absolutely no interest whatsoever. The unsuitability for such a site covers so many aspects. It covers the actual infrastructure of the village. It’s tiny.
“There’s barely enough power for us, the residents, the already. We have two tankers a week taking sewage out. So Yorkshire Water doesn’t have capacity. Northern Power Grid doesn’t have capacity. The roads are small and narrow. We don’t have public transport.
“The messages are absolutely still the wrong plan. Still the wrong place. Andy Burnham keeps saying it’s a commitment from the manifesto to move people out of hotels and into much larger premises for processing, but actually, that’s like moving just the deckchairs on the Titanic.
“Fundamentally, what a government needs to do is to have a proper policy to have proper, efficient processing to accept those who are suitable and deport those who aren’t. It doesn’t matter where they’re housed, they need processing and their lives need to be put on a more even keel as well.”
In Wethersfield, near Braintree in Essex, there are 744 asylum seekers living there, along with 418 people in Crowborough, according to the latest Home Office figures. However, ministers want to move 1,257 migrants into MoD Bicester, near Piddington in Oxfordshire, and another 930 will be housed near the village of Barnham in Suffolk.
The Home Office says its plan to close asylum hotels and move people into alternative accommodation is saving taxpayers’ money.
A spokesman said: “The Government is closing every asylum hotel, saving taxpayers over £1billion on asylum support since the election.
“We are working to fairly house asylum seekers across the country, moving asylum seekers into alternative accommodation, including former military sites which are designed to be self-contained to reduce impact on the local community. As part of the process, we engage with local authorities and police forces to ensure the safety and security of those in the surrounding area.”
RAF Linton opened in 1937 and became an important bomber station during the Second World War, when British and Canadian airmen flew dangerous missions against the Nazis. The base closed in 2020 and was subsequently proposed as an asylum reception centre by Boris Johnson’s Conservative administration in 2022.