Gym, footie pitch, snack bars, free minibuses and tellies… I went inside migrant facility that is like a holiday camp

FROM the outside, Wethersfield looks like a secure facility with its fences topped by barbed wire. But once you walk through the entrance of this former RAF base in Essex it feels more like a holiday camp. This former RAF base in Essex hosts migrants and it feels more like a holiday camp Credit: Getty Migrants are bussed from Weathersfield daily into nearby Chelmsford, Braintree and Colchester Credit: Paul Edwards Inside there is a gym, fitness room, table tennis and pool tables, snack bars, lots of televisions and a large sports hall for five-a-side football, basketball and cricket. Outside young men sit in the shade under trees beside grass fields and a full-sized football pitch. Sign up for The Sun newsletter Thank you! Those men are not here on holiday. They are migrants hoping to stay in the United Kingdom for good. Welcome to Wethersfield Airfield Asylum Accommodation. A place where the barbed wire is very misleading because these young men, around 800 of them, are free to come and go as they please. In fact, they are encouraged to get out and about by using 17 free minibuses which transport the asylum seekers to local towns three times a day, seven days a week. The residents of nearby Chelmsford, Braintree and Colchester have told me the arrival of large groups of men all at one time makes them feel uncomfortable. Most read in The Sun Some locals avoid going into town or make sure they have their shopping done by 10.30am to avoid the surge. Around 800 young men are housed in the facility with access to a gym and NHS care Credit: PA Spacious rooms in the recently refurbished facility included brand new beds Credit: PA This is certainly not good for local businesses because these asylum seekers do not have any more than their £9.95 tax payer funded allowance a week to spend in those shops. Instead they hang about, aimlessly. During my three hour visit to Wethersfield this week, I did not see more than 150 men up and about in the recently refurbished facility. The rest were out or still in their rooms, which each sleep three or six people. There were brand spanking new beds, everything was clean and the residents were either wearing flip-flops or new trainers. You might think this was more than enough for them but I was told the main request put in the Wethersfield suggestion box was for a swimming pool to be added. There were no restrictions on the residents’ movements and the occasional security guards were walking around saying, “Good morning” and, “Hello.” Everybody was enjoying themselves, either training very hard in the gymnasium or lounging around. In a scene reminiscent of Dixon Of Dock Green, a policeman who spends three or four hours a day during the week at the camp arrived on his bicycle. Labour might extend the asylum facility with numbers expected to increase to 1,245 Credit: PA Wethersfield is the ideal place for a veterans village – not a migrants camp Credit: Getty Everyone was on their best behaviour and everything was calm while I was there, although crimes have been reported at the asylum centre in the past. Most migrants are not criminals but these are unregistered men, who have arrived illegally on small boats over the English Channel or been smuggled inside vehicles. Residents will not be reassured by the new pamphlets the Home Office intends to hand out to these migrants, telling them that rape is a criminal offence in the UK. The asylum seekers should know that sexual assaults are wrong. They also receive medical care, which would be the envy of many locals, with a NHS facility on site. Sensibly, they are tested for infections such as tuberculosis (TB). Around 20 percent of arrivals have latent TB which is not infectious. I also saw the pods where migrants are interviewed by the Home Office about their asylum claims. After about 80 days in Wethersfield they get into an Uber taxi, most likely to a House of Multiple Occupation (HMO) somewhere in the country. But, at this point, they have not yet received the answer as to whether their asylum process has been accepted or not. Less than half of asylum applications are granted in the UK and my concern is that the ones who are refused the right to stay are not properly tracked and may end up staying here illegally. Consecutive governments have allowed this to happen and it was the Conservatives that opened up this camp three years ago. High immigration numbers is one of the reasons I joined Reform. For me, it is wrong that these young men who have illegally broken into the country have this fantastic facility. At the same time we have people within Essex that would absolutely die to live in accommodation like this. Clearly tens of millions of pounds have been spent transforming this RAF base, yet we do not have a facility like that for our veterans who have served our country. It’s an absolute outrage. Wethersfield is the ideal place for a veterans village. Instead, Labour might extend the asylum facility with numbers expected to increase to 1,245. There is even a potential “surge capacity” of 1,700. We need to stop what is drawing migrants over: the benefits and top notch accommodation like Wethersfield. This should not be a holiday camp. 1 comment1