"Trust is hanging by a thread” Immigration Removal Centre plans are blasted as minister promises to meet with MP

The Home Office has come under fire for its handling of plans to expand Haslar Immigration Removal Centre, with MP Caroline Dinenage branding the public consultation process "utterly derisory".

The Gosport MP raised the issue directly with the Minister for Border Security and Asylum during his statement on asylum accommodation in the House of Commons, pointing out that the Haslar proposals were being driven through using the Crown Development planning route, bypassing Gosport Borough Council as the local planning authority giving residents little change to have their say.

As previously reported by The News, works are ongoing to refurbish the removal centre to bring it up to standard in the first of two phases for the site in Dolphin Way, Gosport which closed in 2015 following a damning report about its condition.

Work is ongoing for the first phase which will see 130 beds created in the refurbished accommodation, with a second phase to follow creating an additional 600 beds in the future to allow higher levels of enforcement and returns for those who have had their claim for asylum rejected.

However planning decisions for this have been taken away from the council, and by extension local residents. This is because the government has instead announcing the decision making should instead be made by the Secretary of State in Whitehall after a short consultation period in a process known as the Crown Development planning route.

Dame Caroline said that local support for the IRC is already beginning to wear thin, with expansion plans emerging in October featuring an unannounced third storey that had never previously been shown to residents as part of a previous consultation event.

She fears that the limited consultation allowed under the Crown Development planning route risks eroding trust even further, and called on the Minister for Border Security and Asylum Alex Norris to meet her to address the concerns about the plans that she was seeing in her inbox.

In parliament Dame Caroline said: "The Haslar immigration removal centre proposals are meaningfully different from those originally planned, and the Home Office is bypassing the local planning authority, Gosport Borough Council. The public consultation has been utterly derisory. This is a residential urban area, yet local people do not have any opportunity to have a say, because it will be decided by the Secretary of State in Whitehall.

"Leaving aside all the rhetoric, I want straight answers: how many people will now be housed at Haslar, who they will be and how long they will stay there? What opportunity will neighbouring residents have to influence the development and how it looks?

“When will the Home Office have proper public meetings, so that Gosport people can put their questions and have them answered? My residents are furious about what this Government are doing, and they deserve a Minister who will meet me and answer their questions properly."

Responding, Minister for Border Security and Asylum Alex Norris said he would meet with the Gosport MP to ensure information is shared.

He said: “I do not have those numbers at my fingertips, but I will get them to her in short order. There is a point of difference in terms of the engagement, as I can see from the correspondence between us on what has and has not been shared at public meetings about the nature of the site, but let us have that conversation so that we are speaking with one version of the truth.”

Speaking after the debate Dame Caroline said that “trust in this process is hanging by a thread”.

Residents have watched plans change with no warning and have been left in the dark over proper consultation because of the planning route the Government has chosen.

She said: “I'm pleased the Minister has agreed to meet me, and I'll be holding him to that, but a meeting with me is no substitute for the Home Office being straight with the people of Gosport.”

The Conservative frontbench also condemned the Government's approach to asylum accommodation announcements more widely, with shadow minister Katie Lam telling the House that, given the scale of the plans, "the least that they can do is to allow those plans to be subject to proper scrutiny."