Asylum seekers housed at a military barracks will have their own on-site GP, it emerged today – as police brace for a weekend of protests.
The Home Office said 27 ‘illegal migrants’ have been moved into Crowborough Army Camp in East Sussex, with the first arriving under police escort at 3.30am yesterday.
The facility is due to house more than 500 single adult men, who will be free to come and go as they please.
Flag-waving protesters gathered on Crowborough’s High Street last night, while today drones hovered over the site as part of a formidable security presence.
The Home Office has said the asylum seekers will be registered with a GP based inside the base, and will only use off-site services if they require additional treatment.
Officials said this would minimise the impact on local GP services, although it is certain to anger local residents struggling with a shortage of appointments.
A community Facebook page is full of complaints from locals about the issue, with one woman how local GPs were ‘all having problems with having appointments’.
A second claimed she had been unable to see a doctor at her surgery for three months despite ‘calling at 8am’.
Figures suggest NHS Sussex comes seventh out of England’s 42 trusts for the number of patients waiting 28 days or more for a GP appointment.
Photos show protesters gathered on Crowborough’s High Street last night, holding England and Union Jack flags
Police officers stand outside Crowborough Training Camp yesterday after the first group of migrants arrived
An aerial view of the former military barracks, with a heavy police presence in the area
The new asylum site has provoked a huge local backlash, and today a councillor claimed parents are pulling their children out of school as a bus route used by the pupils shares a stop with the base.
Andrew Wilson, who represents Crowborough East, said that because the asylum seekers will each stay at the site for between 70 to 90 days at a time, this amounts to almost 2,800 unknown individuals passing through the town in a 12-month period.
He said that with each man whose background is not known, that ‘increases the risk to local residents’.
Mr Wilson told the Mail: ‘There’s been a number of people who are deciding to take their children out of school because they’re worried they won’t be safe.
‘The camp has CCTV all over it, but when you get beyond the borders of it the cameras don’t cover everywhere.
‘I’m a father of two girls. As a parent, your responsibility first and foremost is to keep your children safe, and if people feel like the government haven’t provided enough information relating to security then parents are within their rights to take action.’
Local residents have expressed fears about the safety of women and children in the wake of a series of sex attacks by asylum seekers across the country.
Karen Creed, 62, said: ‘My main concern is the fact that it’s all men. It’s not families.
‘We don’t know the background of any of them. I want to feel free to walk about in the town in which I live. It feels like the Government is playing with my freedom.’
‘We all feel totally hoodwinked. They brought people down here in the wee small hours, not expecting anybody to see.’
A man was seen arriving at the base this morning in a white van
A 16-seater mini van driven into a migrant camp in Crowborough in the early hours of yesterday morning
Police are bracing for hundreds of anti-migrant demonstrators to descend on the town this weekend
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp called it ‘another day of shame’ for Labour.
‘We have seen hundreds of crimes committed by illegal immigrants in asylum accommodation, including many rapes, sexual assaults and even murder,’ he said.
‘Now the women and children of Crowborough will be exposed to those risks too.
‘Illegal immigrants are costing £4billion a year to house and they pose a threat to local communities up and down the country.
‘If Labour had allowed the Rwanda scheme to start, these illegal immigrants would be in Rwanda, not Crowborough – but Keir Starmer was too weak to carry out the plan.’
The Tory frontbencher added: ‘The Government tried to hide what they were doing in Crowborough by smuggling illegal immigrants into the site under cover of darkness.’
Local MP Nusrat Ghani accused the Home Office of a ‘shameful lack of transparency’.
Opponents of the centre – the first large-scale site opened under Labour – have been considering their own legal action against the Home Office.
Beds at the former army training camp
Kim Bailey, chair of the campaign group Crowborough Shield, said she was hoping to secure an injunction, and criticised the Home Office for an ‘information vacuum’ that had created ‘a lot of fear’ in the town of 23,000 residents.
‘Of course parents are going to worry. Every day you are seeing reports of a different crime,’ Mrs Bailey said.
‘The community opened their arms to Ukrainian families and families from Afghanistan in 2021.
‘This community is not unwelcoming, but this is not right: 540 men with nothing to do, on the edge of a town.’
Labour is planning to open further large sites for migrants as part of its pledge to shut down asylum hotels by 2029.
Latest official figures show the number of asylum seekers being housed in hotels increased by 13 per cent to 36,273 at the end of September.
The coach was assisted by a police escort at 3.28am yesterday morning
Home Secretary Ms Mahmood said: ‘Crowborough is just the start.
‘I will bring forward site after site until every asylum hotel is closed and returned to local communities.
‘I will not rest until order and control to our borders is restored.’
She added: ‘Illegal migration has been placing immense pressure on communities.
‘That is why we are removing the incentives that draw illegal migrants to Britain, closing asylum hotels that are blighting communities.’
The Home Office issued the first images from inside the former barracks, showing basic levels of accommodation including dormitory rooms.
