No plans to house asylum seekers at Wiltshire barracks
Military barracks in Wiltshire will not be used to house asylum seekers – at least, not in the foreseeable future.
Back in September it emerged that the government was thinking of housing asylum seekers at MoD bases while their claims for asylum are processed.
Wiltshire has more MoD bases than anywhere else in England, and the county’s Police & Crime Commissioner, Philip Wilkinson, had “informal discussions” with the MoD over the matter as crowds gathered outside ‘asylum hotels’ elsewhere in the country to protest.
But yesterday (Tuesday, October 28) the government confirmed it was in discussions to use two military sites in Inverness and East Sussex to house a total of 900 refugees.
The government wants 32,000 asylum seekers moved from hotels to other places of accommodation, and disused military bases were seen as viable accommodation.
MDP Wethersfield in Essex and Napier Barracks in Kent are already being used to house asylum seekers whose claims are being processed.
Defence Minister Luke Pollard told BBC Breakfast this morning that the sites were not “luxury accommodation by any means,” but “adequate for what is required”.
He said use of the bases would “enable us to take the pressure off the asylum hotel estate and enable those to be closed at a faster rate.”
The number of foreign nationals seeking asylum in Britain peaked at 56,000 in the summer of 2023.
But protests outside of hotels housing asylum seekers dominated headlines in the summers of 2024 and 2025.
Figures published August showed that as of March 31 there were no asylum seekers staying in hotels in Wiltshire.
However, 154 asylum seekers were housed in alternative accommodation in Wiltshire.
In September the leader of Wiltshire Council, Ian Thorn, hit out at those behind a “series of incidents of harassment being directed at members of the Afghan community not just in one, but in several parts of our county.”
He called the abuse of Afghan migrants “un-British and not patriotic,” pointing out that “some of those Afghans are here because they served the Crown and risked their lives on behalf of our armed forces.”
It came as Reform UK demanded to know how many asylum seekers were in the county and where they were being housed.
“I believe people have the right to know, particularly women who may have concerns over the presence of individuals in their community whose backgrounds and criminal history are not known,” said Cllr Augusta Urquhart-Nicholls.
Cllr Thorn responded: “I won’t be disclosing any more information about where people live.
“It’s insidious, it’s inappropriate, and given what I said at the start of the meeting in terms of the horrendous behaviour of a tiny minority who are making some people’s lives absolutely hell there will be no directing as far as I’m concerned.”