Policy for accommodating asylum seekers at ex-RAF base found unlawful

14th March 2025

The High Court has today found that the Home Secretary breached the public sector equality duty, (‘PSED’) in s.149(1) of the Equality Act 2010, when arranging for single adult male asylum seekers to be accommodated at a remote ex-RAF base in the north Essex village of Wethersfield.

The judgment in TG and others v SSHD [2025] EWHC 596 (Admin) follows over a year of litigation prompted by the previous government’s emphasis on the use of large sites in the asylum support estate.

The claim was brought by four individual claimants (anonymised as ‘TG’, ‘MN’, ‘HAA’ and ‘MJ’). Each suffered from deteriorating mental health while residing onsite. The defendant recognised the first three of the claimants as victims of trafficking and modern slavery.

During their time at Wethersfield, the Home Secretary changed government policy to widen the circumstances in which caseworkers would deem accommodation at Wethersfield to be suitable for individuals, including those with serious physical and mental health difficulties and victims of abuse.

However, in what the High Court termed a ‘most serious and inexplicable omission’, the Home Secretary (who was then James Cleverley), ‘did not attempt to assess the equalities impacts of the proposed policy change’ (§319).

Some key points in the 597 paragraph of Mr Justice Mould’s judgment include:

• Brexit does not significantly affect the correct standard of review in judicial reviews concerning the adequacy of asylum support in the UK. Adequacy in domestic law connotes a subsistence level of support, on a par with EU law (§§74).
• The claimant, TG, was subjected to disability discrimination in that the defendant breached the duty to make reasonable adjustments for his mental health condition by failing to transfer him out of Wethersfield (§430).
• The defendant’s decisions to accommodate the claimants TG, MN and HAA at Wethersfield were unlawful and/or irrational at various times given their vulnerabilities and unsuitability for such accommodation.
• The claimants’ wider, systemic grounds of challenge were dismissed.

3PB’s public law, education and employment barrister Ben AmunwaBen AmunwaCall: 2013 represented three of the four claimants, on a team led by Angus McCullough KC, alongside Shu Shin Luh and Sarah Dobbie, and was instructed by Deighton Pierce Glynn and Gold Jennings. The fourth claimant was represented by Alex Goodman KC leading Miranda Butler and was instructed by Duncan Lewis. The defendant was represented by Lisa Giovonetti KC, David Manknell KC, Sian Reeves and Edward Waldegrave, instructed by the Government Legal Department.