In January 2022, the Home Office opened a consultation on its decision – taken in September 2021 – to grant itself planning permission for the continued use of Napier Barracks as accommodation for people seeking asylum.

The APPG has submitted evidence to the consultation, drawing on the wealth of information gathered during the group’s recent inquiry into quasi-detention.

You can read the APPG’s full submission here.

It highlights how sites like Napier have certain inherent features that jeopardise the mental health and wider well-being of the people seeking asylum accommodated there, and make them fundamentally unsuitable for use as asylum
accommodation.

The submission also raises concerns about the genuineness of the consultation process itself, given that the Home Office is conducting it in a post-hoc manner, five months after the planning permission was already granted.