Asylum Matters welcomes the news announced by the Home Office on Tuesday that the use of the ‘prison-like’ Bibby Stockholm barge to house people seeking asylum will not be renewed past January 2025.
Working with a range of partners across the sector, we have long been campaigning for the closure of harmful large-scale sites like the Bibby Stockholm and for people seeking safety to be housed in #CommunitiesNotCamps.
We welcome the announcement that an end is in sight for the nightmare that has been people’s experiences on the barge at Portland. We are however dismayed by the Home Office’s assertion that the barge will continue to be used to house people seeking safety for the next six months, despite the mounting evidence of harm this will continue to inflict on people held there.
Therefore, we call on the Government to immediately move people off the barge and into safe accommodation within communities.
Furthermore, we call on the Government to build on this news by announcing an immediate closure of the camps at RAF Wethersfield and Napier, which are similarly causing extreme distress and a severe mental health crisis amongst people held there, and immediately disown the previous Government’s plans to establish a further segregated camp at former RAF Scampton, or any similar facility at Bexhill-on-Sea.
People seeking safety should be housed in communities, not camps. Today’s announcement is one step in the right direction, but there are many more to go.
