Last week I joined Nusrat Ghani MP and Cllr Michael Lunn for a meeting with Alex Norris, the Minister for Border Security and Asylum, about Crowborough Training Camp.
Most people in Crowborough do not need the history repeated. You know what has happened. You have seen the police presence, the protests, the uncertainty, the displaced cadets, the antisocial behaviour, the public drunkenness, and the larger groups now moving through the town.
The purpose of the meeting was simple. Following the announcement regarding an extention we needed to put the Minister directly on the spot.
We asked how long the site is really going to be used. The Minister confirmed that, if the Government decides to proceed, the site could be used until 1 January 2030. We asked what legal route the Government would use if it tries to extend the site. We asked about cost, policing, vetting, health services, council resources, cadets, antisocial behaviour and the wider impact on the town.
The Minister said no final decision had been made. He also said the Government had not yet decided what planning mechanism it would use. That answer should concern every resident. The Government is already talking about extension, but says it has not made a decision. It is already exploring continued use, but says it has not settled the legal route.
Crowborough is again being left in uncertainty while the Home Office keeps its options open.
The Minister also said either he, or the Home Office, would return to Wealden District Council’s Scrutiny Committee. That commitment must now be honoured. Not through another private briefing. Not through a managed letter. In public. At scrutiny. With councillors able to ask proper questions on behalf of residents.
I also challenged the Minister on the central theory behind the Government’s policy. Labour says large, more basic sites will reduce “pull factors” and deter illegal Channel crossings. I asked for the evidence. None was provided. No study. No data. No proof that putting men in Crowborough Training Camp will stop anyone getting into a small boat in northern France or the beaches of Flanders.
The evidence the Government does have points the other way. The Home Affairs Committee warned in October 2025 that large sites have generally proved more costly than hotels and will not drive down costs in the same way as dispersal accommodation. It also heard that large sites attract more public concern, complaints, media attention and pressure on local officers.
The Government has evidence that large sites are problematic. What it has not produced is evidence that they work as a deterrent.
Labour promised to “smash the gangs”. It promised control. It promised competence. Yet migrants are still arriving illegally in the United Kingdom by small boat, the asylum estate continues to expand, and communities across the country are being asked to carry the consequences.
Crowborough is not being used because the system is working. Crowborough is being used because the system is not working.
The men placed at the camp are in the asylum system after entering the country illegally. That is why residents are so frustrated when Ministers talk as if this is just an accommodation issue. It is not. It is the visible local consequence of a border failure.
I would also challenge one of the laziest arguments in this debate: “most are granted asylum.”
That line only works if the public has confidence in the system making those decisions. The latest inspection by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration found that progress on reducing the asylum backlog had come at a cost, including decision quality, staff morale and high attrition. It found that quality targets for interviews and decisions had not been met across core decision-making units for over two years. It also found that operational targets had placed too much emphasis on productivity, with little equivalent emphasis on quality.
One finding should in particular was shocking in what it revealed about the system the Government claims is working. In a quality assurance exercise in August and September 2025, the Chief Casework Team sampled 47 grant decisions from 348 cases. It found that 37 of them, 78.72%, contained insufficient evidence on which to make a decision and were therefore likely to be incorrect. The report says this was a limited exercise, but that, if replicated across the system, it suggested asylum decision-making was “not in a good state.”
So when someone says “most are granted asylum”, my challenge is simple: granted by what system? A system under pressure. A system missing quality targets. One where the independent inspector has warned that quality has too often been treated as secondary to speed.
The report also exposed a basic systems failure. The Home Office moved from CID, its old casework database, to Atlas, its current immigration and asylum caseworking system. Since that move, teams making asylum decisions had not been getting proper appeal outcome data or feedback. Put plainly, caseworkers and the wider Home Office were not getting the information they needed to learn properly from decisions that went wrong at appeal.
The consequences are real for communities.
In April, three asylum seekers were convicted over the rape of a woman on Brighton beach. They were all resident at a hotel for people seeking or appealing asylum or immigration status. One of them, Karin Al-Danasurt, an Egyptian national, filmed and encouraged the attack and was convicted as a secondary party. Reports also stated that prosecutors told the court he had been convicted of murder in Egypt in his absence.
Crowborough has already had its own warning sign. On 10 June, National Crime Agency officers arrested Ali Sadeghfar, a 30-year-old Iranian asylum seeker, at Crowborough Training Camp. He had arrived in the UK by small boat and was wanted by the German authorities in relation to sexual abuse allegations. He appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court the next day as extradition proceedings began and was remanded in custody.
My point is not that every person in the asylum system poses a risk. It is that the public are entitled to expect a system that can identify risk, act quickly, and remove people who have no right to remain. Crowborough Training Camp is not a detained facility. The men housed there can leave the site and enter the town. When residents raise concerns about vetting, public safety, antisocial behaviour, public drunkenness and larger groups moving around Crowborough, they are asking basic questions that deserve proper answers.
We also discussed the money being provided to Wealden District Council. Wealden is the arbiter of how that money is spent. Residents are entitled to clarity. Is the money there to mitigate the impact on Crowborough, or is it there to make the camp easier to operate, easier to defend, and easier to normalise?
This is important because the local politics around the illegal migrant issue is not neutral. The Leader of Wealden District Council has publicly aligned herself with the broad “Refugees are welcome here” position, while also opposing the use of Crowborough Training Camp. Some Alliance for Wealden councillors are, I understand, also active in providing activities within the camp fence.
But Crowborough Training Camp is not a general debate about refugees. It is about illegal migration, failed border control, and a Government using our town to house men who entered the country illegally and are now in the asylum system. Mitigation funding must be treated on that basis.
The Minister said the voluntary sector was “not at all essential” to the operation of the camp. If that is right, public money should not drift towards projects that support, entertain or integrate people inside the camp while doing little to reduce the impact on Crowborough residents.
There is a clear difference between mitigating the impact on Crowborough and subsidising activity that should already be part of the camp’s operation. Clearsprings is responsible for managing the site, including keeping residents occupied and providing activities inside the camp fence. Public money given to Wealden should not be used to help Clearsprings or the Home Office run the site more smoothly.
Mitigation should mean support for the town: public safety, visible reassurance, displaced cadets and young people, local services, better reporting of antisocial behaviour, and residents directly affected by the camp. It should not mean funding activities inside the fence while the community outside it is left dealing with the consequences.
Every funding decision should be public, justified, and tested against a strict question: is this money primarily protecting Crowborough residents, local services and community safety, or is it primarily supporting the internal operation of the camp?
That distinction should not be blurred by claiming that almost any activity inside the fence might indirectly reduce pressure outside it. The Home Office and Clearsprings are responsible for managing the site and keeping it orderly. Public money given to Wealden should be focused on the community that has had this decision imposed on it.
The possible extension of Crowborough Training Camp is now the central issue. Residents were told this was temporary. The MOD occupation agreement runs from 4 November 2025 to 26 October 2026. The original planning basis was temporary use for up to 12 months. Now the Government is already exploring keeping the site open for longer.
The cost case also deserves scrutiny. In Parliament, the Minister was challenged on the reported cost of Crowborough, around £160 per person per night, higher than the average asylum hotel place. His answer was that the nightly cost would fall if the site stayed open longer, because up-front costs would be spread over a longer period.
The longer the site stays open, the easier it becomes for the Government to make the cost look better on paper.
That is why the Judicial Review matters. Crowborough Shield’s case is due to be heard on 21 July. They continue to fundraise and deserve the community’s support. Their CrowdJustice page is here:
https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/crowborough-says-no
Nusrat Ghani, Michael Lunn and I pressed the Minister directly. We secured a commitment that the Home Office will return to scrutiny. We challenged the lack of evidence behind the Government’s deterrence theory. We raised vetting, public safety, cost, planning, funding, cadets, antisocial behaviour and the impact on the town. Crowborough Shield is taking the fight through the courts. Residents are still organising, still asking questions, and still refusing to be ignored.
I also believe we should be honest about what actually ultimately solves this.
More camps will not solve it. More hotels will not solve it. More dispersal accommodation will not solve it. More council mitigation funding will not solve it. All of those things manage failure after it has happened.
The Conservative position is now clear. Leave the ECHR. Repeal the Human Rights Act. Leave ECAT. Ban asylum claims from people who enter the country illegally. Remove new illegal arrivals within a week. Create a dedicated Removals Force to remove 150,000 people a year. End the legal merry-go-round through the Immigration Tribunal, immigration judicial review and legal aid for immigration cases. Use returns agreements backed by visa sanctions against countries that refuse to take back their own citizens.
That is the scale of change now required. Illegal entry must not become a route to a long stay in the United Kingdom. People should not be moved from hotel, to camp, to dispersal accommodation while towns like Crowborough are told to absorb the consequences.
My position remains clear. Crowborough Training Camp should not be extended. The Home Office must publish the full basis on which any extension is being considered. It must set out the legal route, the planning mechanism, the cost, the risk assessments, the pressure on police and health services, the vetting process, the impact on cadets and local users, and the evidence behind its claim that large sites reduce pull factors. It must return to Wealden District Council’s Scrutiny Committee and answer questions in public.
Alex Norris met us last week. Next, he must face Crowborough and every other community named in the recent announcement.
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