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Date submitted

8 July 2026

Submitted by

Interested party

I object to the Home Office’s proposal to expand Campsfield House Immigration Removal Centre for the following reasons. Green Belt harm Campsfield is on Green Belt land. Green Belt land is meant to stay open and protected from unnecessary development. However, the proposed expansion proposes large new accommodation blocks, up to 16 metres tall, and more parking, fencing, lighting, and security infrastructure. This would make the site more built-up and less open. The main argument made by the Home Office is that the site should be treated as “grey belt”. Grey belt is a category within the Green Belt. It does not mean the land has stopped being Green Belt, and it does not mean development should automatically be allowed. The Home Office still has to meet the relevant planning tests, including showing that this type of development is justified and necessary. My concern is that the expansion would harm the openness of the Green Belt and further urbanise the local area. The Planning Inspectorate should require the Home Office to show clearly which parts of the site are already developed, which parts remain open, and how the new buildings, fencing, parking, lighting and hardstanding would affect the openness of the Green Belt. Green Belt protection is essential. Developing this land impacts local residents as well as local wildlife and building large, permanent, obtrusive structures will significantly impact this Green Belt land. The need for expansion has not been properly shown. The Home Office has not adequately explained why 240 extra detention places are needed at the Campsfield site specifically. It relies on broad claims about projected demand, immigration enforcement priorities and resilience across the detention estate, but the public cannot properly test the evidence behind those claims. It is not enough to rely on anti-immigration rhetoric to justify the expansion of these centres. While the media latch on to images and narratives of the UK being ‘flooded’ by migrants, there is a need to consider the material reality. How many people are actually expected to migrate and ‘need’ to be detained? How can this be realistically and ‘accurately’ predicted? There also remains a need to consider the context to this proposal. Why is the existing IRC capacity not enough? Why is there a supposed increased need for migration detention? Why is the UK detaining people in this way? And why are migrants in the UK to begin with? The UK has hoarded wealth and resources for hundreds of years through brutal colonial regimes. Post-WW2, immigration became actively encouraged from ‘common-wealth’ nations, sometimes known as the Windrush generation. But now, people are migrating to the UK for economic, social and political reasons. Sometimes from previously colonised nations, nations decimated by colonial extraction, regional conflict and humanitarian disasters, many of which the UK is directly and indirectly implicated in. In the current political context, these migrants are treated as criminals and increasingly criminalised every year. Why are we detaining these human beings and why is current capacity not enough in Campsfield? The Home Office should be required to explain why existing IRC capacity is not enough; what alternatives have been considered; why the expansion has to happen at Campsfield; why permanent development on Green Belt land is justified. If the need for more detention places has not been properly evidenced, the Home Office has not shown that the harm to the Green Belt is justified. The expansion should not be approved. Public scrutiny and human impact I understand that the Planning Inspectorate’s decision will focus on material planning considerations, but this representation is also part of the public record. Humanitarian concerns are valid and should be recorded, especially where they reinforce the need for full scrutiny of a development of this scale and sensitivity. This proposal is not ordinary infrastructure. It is a major expansion of a detention centre, and it should receive the closest possible scrutiny. As a fellow human being who is reading my words right now, I appeal to your humanity. UK immigration detention centres in the UK, as in so many countries, are well-documented for being sites of serious human rights abuses. Campsfield itself has a harrowing history of abuses, with one high profile example in 2007. This is not a one-off event. It is inherently harmful to detain a human being for an unspecified amount of time, to remove them from their support networks, from their freedom. People who have been imprisoned for a crime at least know when they will be released. Humans detained in Campsfield do not have a release date. Imagine living a life in limbo, with every freedom taken from you. Perhaps to those who are reading this and making decisions on paper or on screens, they are just numbers. But each ‘bed’ represents a human life. By accepting this proposed expansion, you are complicit in the systematic abuse and harm of fellow human beings. Are people from other countries, other cultures so terrifying that they must be detained until we, a nation that has committed untold horrors in other countries under the banner of ‘empire’, decide they are safe enough to walk in our lands freely? Approving this expansion extends the colonial harms carried out by the British, but it is now on British soil, by government approved detention centres. The application does not properly address this harm or the wider impact of expanding detention capacity at Campsfield. Request for refusal and public inquiry For these reasons, I object to the application and ask that it is refused. If it is not refused at this stage, I ask the Planning Inspectorate to examine the application through a full public inquiry after the consultation closes. This application raises serious questions about Green Belt harm, the scale and height of the new buildings, local infrastructure, and the evidence for the expansion. These issues should not be decided through written representations alone. A public inquiry would allow the Home Office’s case to be scrutinised in public and the evidence to be properly tested before any decision is made.