Legal challenge over plan to use East Sussex army camp as asylum housing dismissed

A residents’ group has lost its high court challenge against a Home Office decision to use an army training camp to house asylum seekers.Crowborough Shield, a group of concerned residents, launched a legal challenge after securing more than £100,000 for legal fees with crowdfunding, after a government announcement about using Crowborough army training camp as accommodation for asylum seekers.They launched their challenge in December after the Home Office said it was considering housing up to 540 men at the site in East Sussex in October. The Home Office did not proceed with the plan until January, when 27 men were housed at the camp.In a judgment on Friday morning Mr Justice Mould ruled in favour of the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, that the residents could not challenge a decision before it had been formally made.At a hearing on Wednesday, Alex Goodman KC for the group told the court that preparing the site for use was part of the decision-making process.The Home Office defended the challenge, with its lawyers telling the hearing in London that the challenge was “misconceived” and “premature”.In his ruling on Friday, Mould said the challenge was “indeed premature” as at the time legal action was launched, there was “no clearly determined policy to use the camp” as accommodation for asylum seekers.The judge continued that the challenge was “based on a series of assumptions and, to a significant degree, speculative”, adding that the group had “jumped the gun”.He said a new legal challenge could be arguable focusing on issues of concern to residents in the period since the home secretary’s decision was made.Kim Bailey, director of Crowborough Shield, said the group would continue to fight the case. “What happened in today’s ruling was a technical issue. It’s just another step in the process. We will be submitting our challenge again in the next few days to the decision to accommodate asylum seekers at Crowborough.”The site, owned by the Ministry of Defence, is 400 metres from Ashdown Forest, home to the Dartford warbler, European nightjar, and great crested newt – all protected under UK and international law. It forms part of a special protection area, a site of special scientific interest and a special area of conservation.Residents have organised protest marches against the Home Office plans for 16 successive weeks. In their legal challenge, they argued that the government had adopted a secret process for authorising the development, which they said was an abuse of the home secretary’s powers, in breach of conservation rules and that the government had relied on emergency planning powers known as class Q, without disclosing details.In a statement they published before the high court hearing, Crowborough Shield supporters said: “Many of these men are likely to be survivors of war, torture, trafficking, and suffer from PTSD. Yet the government plans to place them in a military environment – surrounded by gunfire from nearby police training facilities and public shooting ranges – an environment that could retraumatise the very people it is supposed to protect.”In a statement in response to Friday’s judgment, a spokesperson for Wealden district council, which has Crowborough in its area, said: “We are disappointed by today’s decision to refuse consent for a judicial review of the government’s decision to house asylum seekers at Crowborough army camp on the grounds that it was premature.“The council strongly opposed the use of the site for this purpose and argued that the government was wrong to grant themselves planning permission, had failed to be transparent in its decision-making and reached a decision without proper engagement and consideration of local community and environmental impacts.“We will now be taking urgent legal advice to consider the issues raised in the judgment.”