The UK government acted unlawfully by housing asylum seekers in a former military barracks that failed to meet minimum living standards, the High Court ruled on Thursday, in the latest of a series of criticisms of the facility’s use.
The six men who brought the case were housed in Napier barracks in Kent in accommodation which the men’s lawyers claimed was “squalid” and which saw a major Covid-19 outbreak in mid-January 2021.
Mr Justice Thomas Linden found that the Home Office failed to ensure an adequate standard of living for the six men, all of whom claimed to have experienced torture or trafficking before they arrived in the UK.
The judge said that the precautions undertaken to prevent the spread of Covid-19 within the “basic and run down” barracks were “completely inadequate” and an outbreak of the disease in January 2021 “was inevitable”.
Napier barracks was the subject of a scathing report in March by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, who also said a Covid outbreak at the facility was inevitable. Yvette Cooper, chair of the House of Commons home affairs select committee, in March published correspondence that suggested the Home Office had defied advice from public health bodies in using the site.
In mid-January, 128 of the approximately 380 residents at Napier barracks tested positive for Covid-19.
Linden found that the Covid safety measures in the barracks “were contrary” to the advice of Public Health England and there was little ventilation in the dormitories, which “were overcrowded when the question of risk of Covid-19 infection is taken into account”.
The judge noted that by November 2020 there were 414 residents sleeping 12 to 14 per dormitory in spaces divided by plywood partitions. The judge noted that it was not feasible to deal with the Covid outbreak on site and so more than 100 residents had to be transferred out of the barracks by January 2021.
Residents were told not to leave the site in mid-January and tensions escalated by late January when there was a major disturbance and fire in one of the accommodation blocks.
Linden concluded that the effect of the government’s decisions was that “it was virtually inevitable that large numbers of residents would contract Covid-19”.
The ruling means that more claims could be brought by men who were housed at Napier during early 2021. Sue Willman, lawyer at Deighton Pierce Glynn, the firm that brought the case, pointed out that people seeking asylum were especially vulnerable to physical and mental illness.
“They have the right to be treated with dignity and should not be accommodated in detention-style barracks,” she said.
Satbir Singh, chief executive of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, another participant in the case, said there was “no place” for sites like Napier, which is still home to 300 people, in UK communities.
“They must be shut down immediately,” he said.
The Home Office did not immediately say whether it planned to appeal against the ruling but vowed to keep using the barracks and insisted it had provided asylum seekers with a “safe and secure place to stay”.
“It is disappointing that this judgment was reached on the basis of the site prior to the significant improvement works which have taken place in difficult circumstances,” the department said, referring to work undertaken since the case was heard in February. “Napier will continue to operate and provide safe and secure accommodation.”
Nick Thomas-Symonds, shadow home secretary, said ministers should say “who will be held to account and how they will ensure it can never happen again”.