It’s Britain’s biggest and most controversial camp for asylum seekers whose 800 mostly male migrants will soon outnumber the residents of the village it abuts.
But while the Wethersfield centre has been criticised by everyone from refugee charities to anti immigration politicians like Priti Patel, the one group who have been conspicuously silent have been those residents themselves.
And has found that the likely reason for the curious hesitancy of locals to discuss their plight is the fear of being condemned in a ‘woke backlash’ by outsiders as intolerant or – worse – even racists.
Wethersfield Airfield Asylum Accommodation, to use its formal title, is situated on the site of an old RAF and sometime US Air Force base in rural Essex.
And while it’s impossible to find anyone who supports the facility, it’s also obvious that many do not want to speak out against the camp publicly for fear of being accused for their views – despite it being a fraught subject in village groups on Facebook, WhatsApp and the like.
It’s not unusual as a journalist to find people who don’t want to speak on the record or be photographed – but when it’s a village of 707 and a national issue on their own doorstep, the reluctance of those in Wethersfield to talk is certainly strange.
Some villagers will tell you off the record how they do not feel safe walking the streets and country lanes at night due to the threat of anti-social behaviour by groups of men roaming the area.
And those living nearest the base, which was previously the Ministry of Defence Police (MDP) HQ, and before that a WW2 RAF and USAF airbase, will tell you that their houses are now unsaleable – but again only off the record.
That also goes for property in the village, which even though it is 1.6 miles from the base, because they share the same name, buyers are put off, it’s said.
Inhabitants of picturesque Wethersfield and its even prettier neighbour Finchingfield say their protests have been ignored by successive governments, and Sir Keir Starmer’s pledge before the election that the asylum centre ‘needs to close’ now rings hollow.
Nick Godley, chairman of Wethersfield Parish Council, is a rarity locally in that he is willing to publicly discuss his opposition to the migrants’ centre – though he is quick to qualify that this is entirely because it’s in the wrong place.
Mr Godley told us: ‘People are almost universally against it for the whole gamut of reasons, either the extreme right-wing fascists who want them pushed back in the sea, or the extreme left-wing liberals who’d like them to be put up in the Savoy, or something in between,’ he says.
‘At the end of the day, they’re human beings, and it isn’t a good place to keep them – it’s in the middle of nowhere…They are free to come and go, but there is nowhere to go.
‘There’s often a bit of trouble on the base, the occasional riot, a few demonstrations and a couple of suicide attempts, and off the base there have been one or two incidents, most of them pretty minor. There was a relatively unpleasant one with a guy who bothered a couple of ladies and tried to interfere with their car.’
He insists that he is not anti-immigration per se, and feels Britain with its ageing population needs the skills that migrants can bring.
He added: ‘Basically, you have young men with no family and no money, nothing to do. It’s pretty unfortunate, and what I find amazing is that it is such a small number of incidents.’
He claimed that some opposition has been fuelled by prejudice.
‘There are racists, there’s no doubt about that,’ he said. ‘There are some extremely racist views expressed. There are also some very liberal views expressed, and everything in between.’
When the migrants moved in, some people in the village decided to welcome them by volunteering to teach English or organise activities at the base. This only seemed to inflame some other locals who wanted nothing to do with the asylum seekers.
Among this group was Mr Godley’s wife Mair, a former school secretary.
She volunteered to teach English at the base and says, ‘It was the best experience of my life.
‘These were people who spoke English, mainly professionals, and they simply wanted to keep developing skills.
‘It seems ridiculous – in here they’re not allowed to do anything. A lot of them want to work and they want to be part of society.’
But she too said there had been a backlash from some residents against those, like her, who had engaged with the centre and the migrants: ‘I left the village Facebook group because of the abuse.’
The issue came to the village near Braintree soon after the migrants were bussed into the former MOD Police HQ in 2023
While the village has a population of 707 people, the Home Office plans to eventually boost the number of migrants at MDP Wethersfield to 800, which locals complain is far too many for the local infrastructure to bear.
On one of the houses right next to the former airbase, the extended Temperley family live in a collection of bungalows overlooking the airfield but say their properties are worthless because of their new neighbours.
‘They wander all over the place ignoring no entry and private signs,’ said Blake Temperley, 51, who is worried for the safety of his teenage daughters.
Recent CCTV footage from his house shows a group of migrants wandering past along the private road and waving to his daughter who was looking through the window.
The builder said he had been inside the centre on contracting business and said the migrants had ‘smashed the place to pieces’. He claimed he has seen migrants defecating along the roadside leading to the base, and empty beer cans often litter the verge.
Not far away from the Temperleys’ bungalows stands a magnificent 12th Century, Grade II listed manor house, painstakingly restored by a former owner, almost surrounded by its own moat.
The current owner, aptly-named plumber John Freshwater, 55, said it was ‘difficult to relax’ with the migrants living so close by.
‘My house faces the sports hall and you can often hear noise coming from there, or music on speakers,’ he said.
‘You see groups of men roaming around the lanes and it puts people off walking, especially women. There are always police, ambulance and sometimes fire engine sirens heading into the base and last year there was a guy threatening to jump off the roof.’
John said he recently found a man walking around the outbuildings next to his house.
‘When I challenged him, he claimed he wanted gardening equipment so that he could plant stuff in the base. I told him to leave and made a complaint to the Home Office. We log every complaint, but it doesn’t seem to make much difference.
‘With more people coming, increasing the number of people to 800, we can only expect more nuisance.’
Finchingfield, which lies exactly two miles from the base, is claimed to be one of England’s prettiest and most-photographed villages.
Their retired publishing executive and parish councillor Roger Duffin, 72, says that in the summer months, groups of bored migrants would wander around the village and it makes residents tense.
‘They’re young men and it doesn’t really matter where they’re from – Bermondsey or Baghdad – it’s just an accident waiting to happen,’ he said.
He wonders how the mandarins in Whitehall managed to choose Wethersfield. Before the asylum centre, the base was ear-marked to house a giant prison, one of the biggest in Europe. That plan has been parked for now, but still looms over the area.
‘People working in government, working from home most of the time, don’t know what’s going on in the world,’ said Mr Duffin.
‘They look at a map, and say “Oh, that’s a good place. Look at all the space there. We can put a prison in there.”
‘They don’t think about how visiting would work or the state of the road network, or lack of public transport. It’s totally unsuitable for prison and the same goes for the migrant centre.
‘It’s the wrong place entirely, and they should be somewhere where they can be more easily absorbed into the local community.
‘The people that run it are doing their best to get sports together, football and whatever it is they play.
‘They’ve got quite a nice gym up there with weights so they can get some exercise.
‘But it’s no life for anybody, no matter how they got there and what their background is. It’s no life for them being stuck in there with 800 other guys.
‘But there is a bigger question: Why are we in a situation where we’ve got this number of people coming into the country?
‘I’m not interested where they come from, that’s irrelevant. But why are these people coming in? What’s the attraction? And why are our borders so open that anybody can waltz in, legally or illegally?’
The asylum centre contract runs out in 2027 and local parish councils are working on something more permanent that will benefit the local communities instead of blighting them.
But there is a huge potential problem – possible contamination of the land. Fire retardant chemicals used copiously during the site’s past as an airbase, along with potential deposits of radioactive ash from old aircraft parts could pose a hazard to current and future residents, say local groups.
Andrew Hull, chairman of the Wethersfield Airfield Scrutiny Committee, comprising 13 parish councils in the area, opposes any major development on the site because they have, they say, serious concerns about contamination.
‘We have lived here all our lives and heard stories about things being buried, tips built and when we heard about this prison plan initially, and then the migrants centre, it set off alarm bells,’ said Mr Hull.
The committee commissioned international consultants Buro Happold who interviewed neighbouring farmers and former employees and firefighters from the base.
‘Their report stated quite clearly that there was a high risk of severe consequences to human health of people simply visiting the site.
‘It’s also extremely likely that radioactive ash could just be on the surface. They used to do this thing called “bash, bury and burn” with old planes after World War Tws.
‘The aircraft dials were full of radioactive paint which they would rip out, put them in the incinerator and chuck the ash anywhere on the site.
‘We need to work out what the implications are for the site, the wider site. There is talk of turning it into a large-scale solar farm, which would mean minimal footfall.
‘It would be probably the largest community-owned solar farm in the UK. There is talk about a large scale solar going up there with minimal footfall. You know, they’ll be one to do, probably the largest community owned solar farm in the UK. That’s one option being put forward, which would tick all government boxes.’
The Home Office’s disastrous move in 2023 to place so many men from all over the world to the remote 800-acre site far from shops or transport has brought condemnation from across the political spectrum, uniting such unlikely allies as activists from Care 4 Calais and the former Tory Home Secretary, Ms Patel.
On Friday, Refugee charity Care4Calais called on the Government to close the Wethersfield asylum camp following a High Court judgement that they have been unlawfully accommodating some people at the site.
A Judge found that the Home Secretary acted unlawfully and in breach of her duties by accommodating three vulnerable asylum seekers – TG, MN, and HAA – at RAF Wethersfield.
The court heard that the individuals were victims of trafficking, torture and/or serious physical violence who each suffered a serious decline in their mental health as a result of living at Wethersfield.
Responding to the judgement Steve Smith, CEO of Care4Calais said:
‘Today’s legal judgement is confirmation that the Wethersfield camp is not suitable accommodation for people seeking sanctuary in the UK.
‘The mental despair this camp has inflicted on its residents cannot be overstated. The daily stories of self-harm, depression and anxiety led us to initiate this legal challenge, and today the High Court has found that the Government has broken the law by accommodating survivors of torture and modern slavery in the camp.
‘The Government has a moral duty to act on today’s legal judgement. They have already closed the Bibby Stockholm, and must now do the same with Wethersfield and announce the immediate closure of the camp. Everyone seeking safety in the UK deserves to be housed in communities, not camps.’
A challenge from Care4Calais’ lawyers that the Home Office allocation policy in placing migrants in Wethersfield was ‘systemically’ unlawful was rejected by the judge.
Meanwhile Ms Patel, MP for nearby Witham, has repeatedly called on the Government to scrap the plans, citing the fact that this is a rural site unsuitable to accommodate the scale of the additional population, and that it does not have the infrastructure or public services in place.
A Home Office spokesperson said: ‘This government not only inherited an asylum system in chaos, but also this legal challenge regarding the use of the Wethersfield site.
‘A judicial review has found that the site is adequate for asylum seekers and we remain of the belief that it provides fully adequate and functional accommodation for those who we have a legal obligation to support.
‘More widely, it remains our determination to cut the unacceptably high costs of asylum accommodation to the British taxpayer, including ending the use of hotels over time, and our continued use of the Wethersfield site as a more cost-effective alternative to hotels remains an essential part of that strategy.’