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Date submitted

6 August 2026

Submitted by

Interested party

Objection to CROWN/2026/0000005 – Expansion of Haslar Immigration Removal Centre I am writing to strongly object to the proposed expansion of Haslar Immigration Removal Centre from 130 to 600 places. I am part of #NoDetentionNoHaslar, and I have supported refugees and people seeking asylum in various ways for over 20 years, becoming much more deeply and practically involved over the past four years. When able, I help at a refugee drop-in, where people can access casework, support, friendship, English lessons and lunch, and where children have a safe space to play and simply be children. I continue to support people individually, particularly with accessing appropriate solicitors, navigating their asylum cases and getting the legal representation they need. These experiences are one of the main reasons I feel so strongly about immigration detention. I have supported people whose asylum claims were initially refused and who could therefore have faced detention and removal. With appropriate legal representation, evidence and support, their cases have subsequently been properly reconsidered and they have been granted refugee status or other protection. When you know these people personally, the consequences of getting these decisions wrong become frighteningly real. An initial refusal does not necessarily mean somebody does not have a genuine need for protection. Sometimes evidence has not been properly considered or presented. Sometimes adequate legal representation has been difficult to obtain. Sometimes the original decision is simply wrong. Yet while those mistakes are being challenged, a human being can potentially lose their freedom and become more traumatised. Wrongful immigration detention is not merely a hypothetical possibility. In 2023–24, the Home Office paid approximately £12 million in compensation for wrongful detention. And in the year ending September 2024, more than half of those who entered immigration detention were ultimately released back into the community. I have seen the people behind cases like these. I know people whose futures have depended upon finding the right solicitor, obtaining the right evidence and having an incorrect decision successfully challenged. These are human beings whose lives can be profoundly damaged while the system works out whether it has made the right decision. Many of the people I have supported have already experienced extraordinary trauma — war, persecution, imprisonment, torture, sexual violence, bereavement and dangerous journeys. They have fled because they needed safety. Locking people away after everything they have already endured can compound that trauma enormously. Detention separates people from their children, partners, friends, communities, healthcare, legal representatives and the people supporting their cases. People detained for immigration purposes can also face profound uncertainty about when their detention will end. The psychological consequences of that uncertainty and loss of control should not be underestimated. I have witnessed that fear myself. During the Rwanda policy, a group of us regularly stood outside the police station where people seeking asylum were required to report. We were there to support them, offering refreshments, handing out information and emergency helpline numbers, and counting people going into and coming out of the building so that legal and support organisations could be alerted if somebody was detained. Some people were so frightened that they wrote emergency telephone numbers on their bodies in case their phones and belongings were taken from them. That has stayed with me. These were not statistics or headlines. They were people we knew, walking through a door frightened that they might not walk back out again. Through the years I have spent supporting refugees and people seeking asylum, I have met so many kind, talented, intelligent and resilient people. They have enriched my life and our communities enormously. The hostile picture of people seeking asylum that is so often presented bears very little resemblance to the human beings I actually know. Of course, as within every nationality, religion or section of society, there will be individuals who do wrong. But it is deeply unjust to portray or treat an entire group of people as a threat because of the actions of some. This is why I cannot support spending hundreds of millions of pounds creating hundreds more places in which to detain people. The scale of this proposal is extraordinary. Haslar has not even reopened with its planned capacity of 130 people, yet permission is already being sought to expand it to 600 places — approximately 470 additional detention places. It would more than quadruple its planned capacity before the smaller centre has even operated in practice. I do not believe that the need for an expansion of this magnitude has been sufficiently demonstrated. The contract to operate the expanded Haslar IRC is valued at approximately £299 million over six years. At a time when public services and communities are under enormous financial pressure, I find it extremely difficult to accept that detention on this scale represents a humane or sensible use of public money. There are alternatives. People can be supported within communities while their cases are decided, remaining connected to their families, healthcare, legal representatives and support networks. Money could instead be invested in faster and fairer asylum decision-making, competent legal representation and community-based support. We should be investing in getting decisions right, not investing hundreds of millions of pounds in locking people away while those decisions are fought over. This is also not an ordinary building project. It is a proposal to create a very large locked institution operating 24 hours a day, potentially holding hundreds of people who have already experienced significant trauma. That makes healthcare, mental-health support, safeguarding, access to legal representation, family contact and emergency evacuation particularly important. I am also concerned about expanding a locked institution on a coastal site where flood and surface-water risks have been identified. If there is an emergency, the people detained inside Haslar cannot simply choose to leave. Above everything else, I believe we need to remember the humanity of the people affected by this decision. I have sat with people seeking asylum, helped them find solicitors, supported them through difficult cases, sat with them as they describe their torture to Psychiatrist Scar specialists, been by their sides in court, and seen what happens when a refusal is eventually overturned and somebody is finally recognised as being entitled to protection. I have stood outside reporting centres with people terrified of being detained. These experiences make it impossible for me to view another 470 detention places as simply numbers on a planning application. They represent 470 human beings at any one time. People with families. People with histories. People who may have survived things most of us can barely imagine. And, inevitably, some people whose cases may later be found to have been wrongly decided. There must be a more humane way! I therefore ask the Planning Inspectorate to refuse application CROWN/2026/0000005. If the application is not refused at this stage, I ask that it be examined through a full public inquiry, allowing the claimed need for 470 additional detention places, the human consequences of detention, the scale of public expenditure, safeguarding and healthcare provision, and the safety of those who would be detained there to be properly scrutinised in public. I would like to be informed of, and have the opportunity to attend, any hearing or public inquiry that takes place. No human being is illegal! #NoDetentionNoHaslar