Home Office Slated Over Northeye Purchase
HUGH SULLIVAN
A year ago we reported (in HIP 239: £9m Private Profit Revealed) that when the Home Office bought the former prison site of Northeye on the edge of Bexhill in September 2023 it paid £15.3m to the vendors, a Bexhill-based private finance enterprise. Only 13 months previously, this outfit, Brockwell Group Bexhill LLP (BGB), had themselves bought it for £6.31m from the UAE government (who had been using it for some unexplained military training purposes until around five years ago). The onward sale to the Home Office thus netted BGB a profit of virtually £9m with no outlay.
Former Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick with Rishi Sunak
Last week a report released by the National Audit Office, having made internal investigations into the Home Office’s procedures, concluded that its purchase was made after “cutting corners”, and “mak[ing] a series of poor decisions. This resulted in it purchasing a site that was unsuitable for [its] original purpose, and it paying more for it than it needed to.”
The NAO report refers to “established processes” being dispensed with, and to failure to undertake a full assessment of necessary remediation, despite awareness of the risk of contamination both to the existing buildings and to the surrounding ground from asbestos-containing materials on the site.
WHATEVER THE COST
An initial Planning Appraisal completed in February 2023 had highlighted this contamination risk and recommended supplementary investigation. However, it seems that the Home Office was by that stage determined to go ahead, whatever the cost. In December 2022, prime minister Rishi Sunak told Parliament that the government was working to end the use of hotels for the housing of asylum seekers “as quickly as possible”. And in January 2023 a group of civil servants and Conservative ministers, including Robert Jenrick – then immigration minister, more recently losing rival to Kemi Badenoch for leadership of the party – decided to fast-track the Northeye purchase as one of a number of sites to be used for their alternative accommodation.
In March 2023 it was Mr Jenrick who publicly announced the intention to develop the site for this purpose.
Initially it was suggested that no detention would be involved, with up to 1,200 adult male residents who had arrived on small boats from across the Channel free to come and go. The plan sparked vigorous protests both from local resident groups opposing the accommodation of asylum seekers on principle and from Stand Up To Racism campaigners who regard the site as wholly unfit for any human habitation. By May, the Home Office were saying that it would be used as a detention centre. However, although the purchase was completed in September 2023, no remedial work went ahead, and there was subsequent silence from Suella Braverman’s Home Office team, as they pursued (to no ultimate avail) their Rwanda deportation scheme.
The change of government in July has brought no clarity to the site’s future. Newly appointed Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced on 21 August “a major surge in immigration enforcement and returns activity” and stated that this would entail “increased detention capacity”. However, no indication was given that this either would or wouldn’t include renewal of plans for accommodation at Northeye.
The fact is that, notwithstanding the shortcomings exposed by the NAO in the purchase process, the Home Office retains the responsibility to use the site for public benefit. Rother District Council’s Local Plan of 2019 allocated it for the development of 140 homes, 30% of which were to be affordable housing, along with sports fields and a children’s play area. That doesn’t seem to have taken account of ground contamination either. But £15.3m is a lot to have paid from the public purse for a site that remains in wholesale dereliction.
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