The rural council fighting Home Office plan to house asylum seekers in army barracks

Labour’s hope of sending up to 300 asylum seekers to a military base in the Scottish Highlands is at risk of being blocked.

The plan to house people at Cameron Barracks in Inverness does not have the required multiple occupancy (HMO) licence, according to the local rural council.

The Home Office has also failed to “do its homework” to meet separate planning regulations in Scotland, claimed a former SNP minister opposed to the barracks plan.

Refugee charities – condemning barracks as “entirely unsuitable places”- hope the row in the Highlands can force a nationwide Labour U-turn on asylum policy.

It comes as another legal hurdle to Labour’s military barracks plans emerged. High Court judges have ruled that a policy forcing torture victims to share rooms is unlawful.

The Labour Government is still pushing to shut down asylum hotels after the sites became flashpoints for sometimes violent anti-migrant protests.

Keir Starmer, when in opposition, claimed that the Tories’ use of military sites for asylum housing was “unsustainable”. But Labour has since turned back to former barracks as a solution – moving around 350 people into Crowborough army camp in East Sussex earlier this year.

Barracks plan ‘simply does not make any sense’

The Home Office had wanted to move up to 300 single, male asylum seekers into Cameron Barracks in Inverness in early December, planning to use the site for 12 months.

But Highland Council, run by a coalition of the SNP and independent councillors, has insisted that a HMO licence would be needed to house so many people at the barracks.

SNP council leader Raymond Bremner and Lib Dem opposition leader Alasdair Christie wrote to the Home Office to say “it simply does not make any sense” to send 300 asylum seekers to the north of Scotland.

Bremner and Christie also cited the potentially negative impact on “community cohesion”, and made clear that a HMO licence was needed.

The Home Office, however, does not think it needs a HMO licence. Home Office minister Alex Norris said in March letter to the council that it was the department’s “strong contention” that a licence was not required.

The minister pointed out that the site had previously housed multiple families from Afghanistan under the Afghan Resettlement Programme without such a licence.

However, in a recent letter to Highland Council, Norris was less forceful. The Labour minister said officials had met with the council’s licensing team to try to understand HMO requirements.

Home Office accused of failing to ‘do homework’

Aside from the HMO row, former SNP minister Fergus Ewing believes the Home Office would also need planning permission for a “change of use” if they wanted to use the site for longer than six months.

Ewing, who lost his seat at the recent Holyrood elections, told The i Paper he suspected that the Home Office “didn’t do their homework” on planning law.

“My understanding is the Home Office assumed the law in England, which allows occupation for 12 months without local government consent, applies in Scotland. It doesn’t. Here it’s only six months.”

Ewing said he got the “impression” from Norris’s most recent letter that the Home Office may be “getting cold feet” about the Inverness barracks plan.

Asking about the planning issue raised by Ewing, a Highland Council spokesperson said: “We are still awaiting confirmation from the Home Office on their specific plans for the site to determine if planning permission is required.”

Military families get doorbell cameras and fences

Isabelle MacKenzie, a Conservative councillor in Inverness, said placing up to 300 asylum seekers in the site on the edge of the town centre was “the wrong plan in the wrong place”.

She is worried about the pressure on GPs and the NHS in Inverness, which has a population of just under 50,000.

The HMO and planning row “may seem a technicality, but it speaks to the wider problem – the Home Office has not planned this properly”, she told The i Paper.

MacKenzie is also worried about the 150 military families living next to the barracks. Some of the military wives have shared fears about their safety, the councillor said.

Labour defence minister Luke Pollard recently wrote to MacKenzie to say officials had tried to reassure residents by installing doorbell cameras and fences.

“They’re not happy or reassured by that,” said the Tory councillor. “They have legitimate concerns about their safety. It’s a disservice to them to dismiss those concerns.”

Councillors still ‘completely in the dark’

Inverness has seen both anti-migrant protests and counter-demonstrations by anti-racism activists over the barracks plan in recent months.

Some residents previously told The i Paper they did not like the idea of single men “hanging around the streets”. But others said they hoped Inverness could “welcoming place” for migrants. 

Chris Ballance, a Green councillor in the Highlands, said there was “a lot of sympathy for the plight of asylum seekers” in the area.

But councillors are “completely in the dark” about whether the Home Office will try to push the plan through if it needs various permissions, he added.

It is unclear whether the lack of information is “simply disdain for local people or total incompetence – or both,” he added.

Labour urged to make wider U-turn

Steve Smith, chief executive of the refugee charity Care4Calais, said the legal stand-off between the Home Office and the council was “a clear symptom of a rushed, top-down policy”.

Smith urged a wider U-turn on the use of military barracks across the UK, arguing that they are “entirely unsuitable places to house traumatised people fleeing war and persecution”.

The i Paper previously reported how people living in barracks at RAF Wethersfield in Essex have had to cope with outside showers, rats and leaking toilets.

A Home Office spokesperson said it was sticking by its barracks policy as a way of “removing the incentives” for asylum seekers to come to the UK.

“That is why we will close every single asylum hotel, moving illegal migrants into basic accommodation like military barracks,” they said, adding that the Government continues to work with councils on delivering its plans.