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Date submitted

5 August 2026

Submitted by

Interested party

Dear Planning Inspectorate, I am writing to object to the Home Office’s proposal to expand Haslar Immigration Removal Centre in Gosport (hereinafter, Haslar). The application reference is CROWN/2026/0000005. Haslar has not yet reopened. The Home Office says the refurbished centre would hold up to 130 people, with reopening expected in 2027. The current application seeks permission to add up to 470 more detention places, taking Haslar to a 600-bed detention centre. I am responding on behalf of Rainbow Migration, a charity that supports LGBTQI+ people through the asylum and immigration system. We regularly support LGBTQI+ people who are in – or at risk of – immigration detention. We object for the following reasons: Human impact and detention harm Immigration detention causes serious and sometimes irreversible harm to the people held there. The effects of that harm do not stop at the perimeter fence. Families, legal representatives, community groups, health and advice services, faith groups, local residents and local authorities are often left responding to the consequences of detention, including distress, release into hardship, safeguarding concerns, destitution, emergency support needs, removal, protest and public concern. Nor do the effects of that harm cease when a person is released from detention. Many – particularly those who have come to the UK seeking safety – will have been retraumatised by the experience, and suffer long-lasting deterioration in their mental health. The application does not properly address this harm or the wider impact of expanding detention capacity at Haslar. While we understand that the Planning Inspectorate’s decision will focus primarily on material planning considerations, we note that humanitarian concerns are also 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 on a coastal site, and it should receive the closest possible scrutiny. At Rainbow Migration we support LGBTQI+ people who are held in the UK’s immigration detention estate, and witness first-hand the serious harm that is inflicted on this group by the practice of immigration detention. We have heard from those we support in detention that they have experienced homophobia, biphobia and transphobia from detention centre staff and other detained people, which has further traumatised these individuals – causing their mental health to decline – and has on some occasions also resulted in serious physical injuries. We are also aware of service users who have harmed themselves and attempted to take their own lives as a direct result of being detained. We have heard from service users about the shock and hurt that being detained has caused to them. As one of our service users explained: “we fled our home country for safety because we would be imprisoned because of our sexuality, because of who we are, only to reach somewhere we believed to be safe [the UK] and then be imprisoned there instead. The only thing we did was try to be safe. We now have to hide who we are again because it is not safe to be gay in here”. In the last six months we have also seen a significant increase in the number of our service users being detained in IRCs. As it is, the immigration detention system is causing escalating and avoidable harm to those detained, as recently reported in IMB’s National Annual Report (see ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ To further increase the capacity of Haslar would likely lead to even more vulnerable people – including our service users – being detained, and the impact on their physical safety and mental health would be extremely detrimental. Flood risk, coastal safety and climate change Haslar is a coastal site next to the Solent, and parts of the site are in Flood Zone 3, meaning there is a high risk of flooding from the sea. Climate change makes this more serious because flood risk is likely to increase over the lifetime of the development through sea level rise, heavier rainfall, storms and pressure on coastal defences. The Coastal Modelling Report prepared for the application gives sea-level rise estimates from a 2017 base year to 2125 of 1.093m under the higher central allowance and 1.467m under the upper end allowance. There are also concerns about surface water flooding, including flooding on the route used to get in and out of the site. This is not an ordinary building. It would be a locked, secure detention centre. People detained at Haslar would not be free to leave if there was a flood warning, severe weather, a failure of flood defences or another emergency. The Planning Inspectorate should not approve this application unless there is clear evidence that detained people, staff, visitors, emergency services and escort vehicles would be safe for the lifetime of the development, including in future climate conditions. The fact that the Home Office has produced a Flood Evacuation Management Plan does not remove this concern. It shows that flood evacuation is a serious operational issue. The plan relies on flood warnings, staff action, staged evacuation, transport arrangements, emergency services and coordination with local bodies. It also says that, in an extreme flooding event, the whole site would be required to evacuate, and that residents may need to be moved to another IRC or holding centre if transport is delayed. The need for expansion has not been properly demonstrated The Home Office has not clearly explained why 470 extra detention places are needed at Haslar. This is especially concerning because Haslar has not yet reopened. The Home Office is asking for permission to expand the site to 600 places before the refurbished 130-bed centre has opened or been tested in practice. The Home Office should be required to explain why existing IRC capacity is not enough; what alternatives have been considered (including alternatives to detention); why the expansion has to happen at Haslar; why it is asking to expand Haslar before the reopened centre has operated in practice; why a locked 600-bed detention centre is suitable on this coastal site; and how the impacts on flooding, emergency evacuation, local services, healthcare, traffic, public access, ecology and the local community would be managed. This matters because the Home Office is relying on claimed need to justify a very large expansion. If the need for more detention places at Haslar has not been properly evidenced, the expansion should not be approved. In particular, we note that the Home Office has previously piloted two “alternative to detention” (ATD) schemes, supporting people subject to immigration control to resolve issues with their immigration status in the community rather than detaining them. These pilots were independently evaluated by NatCen on behalf of UNHCR and found to be both more cost-effective and more humane than detention, with no evidence of higher rates of absconding (see █████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ Home Office should be required to explain why they need to expand capacity at Haslar, at considerable cost and requiring permanent development on a coastal site with flood risks, rather than investing in cheaper and more humane means of meeting their stated immigration enforcement priorities. Public scrutiny and missing information There are two problems with public scrutiny in this application. First, the Home Office has applied for outline planning permission, with only access being decided at this stage. This means the Planning Inspectorate is being asked to decide whether the expansion should be allowed in principle, and how people and vehicles would get in and out of the site. Other important details may be dealt with later, including the final layout of the buildings, what the buildings would look like, landscaping, and the detailed size and design of the development. This means people are being asked to comment now on whether Haslar should become a 600-bed detention centre, before all the practical details are finalised. Second, some important information is not being made available for full public consideration because it has been treated as official sensitive information. This includes information about site layout, development parameters, elevations and sections, floor plans, roof plans, landscaping, lighting, accommodation blocks, the Care and Separation Unit, the dining hall, flood evacuation, coastal modelling, ecology and biodiversity, transport and travel planning, local community impact, heritage, and landscape and visual impact. Some security-sensitive information may need to be protected. But the public still needs enough information to understand the planning impacts. This is especially important because, if outline permission is granted now, the basic principle of expanding Haslar into a much larger detention centre would already have been accepted. Later stages would usually focus on the details of how the expansion is built, rather than reopening the question of whether the expansion should happen at all. Without enough clear public information, it is very difficult for people to understand what a 600-bed detention centre at Haslar would mean in practice, or to respond properly. The application should not be approved unless the public has enough information to scrutinise the proposal and its impacts. Request for refusal and public inquiry For these reasons, we object to the application and ask that it is refused. If it is not refused at this stage, we ask the Planning Inspectorate to examine the application through a full public inquiry after the consultation closes. This application raises serious questions about flood risk, coastal safety, climate change, emergency evacuation, the scale of the proposed expansion, local infrastructure, healthcare and emergency services, public access to the coast, ecology, heritage, waste, the evidence for the expansion, the harm caused by detention, and the impact of missing or withheld information. 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. Yours faithfully,