UK Borders Agency Detention Centre
The UK Borders Agency Detention Centre in Pease Pottage is on the site formerly occupied by Crawley Forest School. The building is an internment camp for refugee families with children, who are awaiting deportation. The camp can accommodate up to 44 people.
Up-to-date information about the detention centre can be found on the London Noborders website.
Planning History
A planning application to Mid Sussex District Council by Arora Hotels, the owners of Crawley Forest School, proposed to convert the building into an internment camp for refugees. The planning application was approved on 24 March 2011.
Public Subsidy, Private Profit
The camp is to be run by Arora on behalf of the UK Borders Agency under a public subsidy, private profit arrangement. There are two similar detention centres in Crawley, Tinsley House and Brook House, which are both run by Group 4 Securicor under the same arrangement.
The new camp takes on the functions of the family unit at Yarl’s Wood, which closed in 2010. Find out more about the deportation system and the multi-million pound contracts to be made from it.
Barnardo’s
The children’s charity, Barnardo’s, was approached to provide some care for the children in detention. Its involvement was reported to have strongly influenced the council’s decision to approve the application. Barnardo’s seems to have a history of ethically dubious collaboration with the state, having reportedly made use of a forced labour scheme in the late 1990s.
Secrecy
It has been claimed that the contract for the camp in Pease Pottage was awarded to Arora without the public tendering process that is required by law. If this is true, it is more likely to be a device for avoiding public discussion rather than because of financial corruption.
For the same reason, the Home Office instructed Mid Sussex District Council to ensure that details of the planning application were kept secret from the general public. At the time of writing, copies of the request could be found on Mid Sussex District Council’s Public Access Planning website – see the two PDF documents listed under ‘correspondence’ in the left-hand frame.
Arora’s Previous Planning Application
In 2009, Arora tried unsuccessfully to convert one of their hotels, the Mercure Hotel in Crawley, into an internment camp.
Location and Driving Directions
The Pease Pottage internment camp is on Brighton Road in Pease Pottage, not Brighton Road in Crawley, which is a couple of miles to the north.
It is on a 6-acre site formerly occupied by Crawley Forest School, and before that, the BAA Training Centre. It is next door to G & GW Bridges’ car breaker’s yard:
From the A23 and junction 11 of the M23:
- Follow the signs for the B2114 to Handcross.
- Carry on past the motorway service station.
- Go straight on at the small roundabout.
- The internment camp is a couple of hundred yards along on the left-hand side of the road, immediately after the entrance to the car scrap yard. There is a nice green sign outside, with the word ‘Cedars’ on it.
Contact Details
- website
- no website yet
- no email
- phone
- phone number not available
- address
- Brighton Road, Pease Pottage, West Sussex, RH11 9AD
