'Simply unsuitable' - councillor to question Home Office on asylum seeker plans
Cllr Taylor will meet with The Home Office today to discuss the controversial plans for Linton-on-Ouse (Image: Supplied)
FRESH concerns have been raised about controversial plans to house asylum seekers on a former RAF base in North Yorkshire.
The scheme for the disused military site at Linton-on-Ouse has resurfaced four years after it was dropped by the government, causing renewed anxiety and uncertainty among residents.
North Yorkshire Councillor Malcolm Taylor represents the village.
Today, he and Marc Goddard, the chairman of Linton-on-Ouse Parish Council, will meet with the Home Office to discuss the plans.
Cllr Taylor said the meeting will be a fact-finding one for residents, who desperately seek answers.
Cllr Malcolm Taylor called the plans a "double-edged sword" for both villagers and asylum seekers
(Image: Supplied)
He said: “It’s difficult to know what the Home Office timeline is.
“There are a lot more unanswered questions than answered ones.
“When I visit the village, the most frequent questions I get asked is: ‘What is happening?’ and ‘Do you think this will really go ahead this time?’.
“I wish I knew.
"I’ve got to be honest with villagers; there’s no point in reassuring them it’s not going to happen because it’s very much on the table.”
Five former military sites in the UK are being explored to house asylum seekers by the Home Office.
A government spokesperson said the concerns of communities were “central” to its immigration reforms, adding: “We are working with local authorities and others to fairly disperse asylum seekers across basic accommodation including ex-military sites”.
“When I visit the village, the most frequent questions I get asked is: ‘What is happening?’ and ‘Do you think this will really go ahead this time?’.
(Image: Owen Humphreys/PA Wire)
The government is seeking to reduce the number of asylum seekers housed in hotels, which between April 2024 and March 2025 cost £2.1 billion, official figures show.
Relocating asylum seekers away from hotels is something Cllr Taylor says he supports in principle.
He said: “It’s not nimbyism, the plans aren’t suitable for residents or the asylum seekers – it’s a double-edged sword.
'If anything, it's less appropriate now than it was in 2022'
“If anything, the site is less appropriate than it was when it was rejected four years ago.
“In 2022, there was some infrastructure left from the RAF that could have helped the asylum seekers, but after we got the news, we started a four-year process of decommissioning.
"It's not your archetypical RAF base, tucked away, it's very close to the local school, and the village does not have the means to support potentially 1,200 extra people."
It comes after North Yorkshire Council formally urged ministers to drop the plans, insisting it was the wrong proposal in the wrong location.
It joined the York and North Yorkshire Mayor, David Skaith, in its opposition.
Campaigners in Linton-on-Ouse in 2022
(Image: Pic supplied)
Cllr Taylor said one of the biggest criticisms the community had with the previous government in 2022 was the lack of communication.
“The government today do not seem to have learned from that,” he said.
He added: “We’ve been kept very much out in the cold.”
A Home Office spokesperson did not address this in the statement, but it is understood that the government is seeking to restore confidence from the public, giving back hotels to communities and handling the proposals with “fairness”.
A statement said: “The population of asylum seekers in hotels has fallen by 35 per cent in the last year and by 63 per cent from the peak under the previous government.
“Overall asylum costs have already fallen by £1 billion since this government was elected.”
Cllr Taylor added: “I know how much this campaign took out of everyone in 2022, for the community of Linton-on-Ouse to have to go through this again is just incredibly saddening.
“There are quite a lot of people who did get genuinely stressed about this.
“The uncertainty weighs heavily on them.”