UKBA MINDS ITS PEASE FOR NEW SUSSEX DETENTION CENTRE

Planning permission has been granted to the UK Border Agency (UKBA) to turn a special-needs school in Pease Pottage, Sussex, into a ‘pre-departure accommodation facility’ for families facing deportation.

The proposals for the centre are part of the ConDems new pilot scheme for deporting families, spun by the UKBA as “a new, compassionate approach to family removals”, and heralded by Nick Clegg as “an enormous culture shift within our immigration system.”

The new scheme involves three stages: Assisted Return, Required Return and Ensured Return, the idea being that the measures taken to force families to leave the country will become more drastic the further through the process the families are. Unsurprisingly, few families go voluntarily, and out of 96 cases, only three have so far been deported under the first two stages. The Home Office was, of course, rather disappointed with these results.

The greatest ‘shift’ we have seen so far is that the new system appears to have created a new market for detention and deportation profiteers. By the ‘Ensured’ stage, secure hostels, run by private accommodation providers, are used to house families for up to a week before they are forced to leave the country.

In the case of Pease Pottage, an application was lodged on the 2nd February by the UKBA to convert Crawley Forest School, a residential school for children with behavioural and learning difficulties, into a deportation hostel. The proposed hostel will be the third such centre established within the last year, the other two are in London and Liverpool. The school is owned by Crossroads Childrens Education Services Ltd., a private company owned solely by its director Sunita Arora, the wife of Surinder Arora, the owner and founder of Arora International Hotels.

The case gets even murkier. According to Corporate Watch: “No open procurement tendering process for the facility, as required by EU and UK legislation, has taken place, which suggests that there may have been some dodgy, behind-closed-doors deal between the UKBA and the Arora Group.” Eager to keep this controversial development out of the limelight, the Home Office sent a letter to Mid Sussex Council, asking them not to publish the application details due to ‘sensitive information’, a measure usually taken for military facilities.

The plans were eventually made public thanks to a leaked ‘consultation letter’ sent to locals by private consultation firm CgMs on behalf of the Home Office, the content of which tried to convince them of the new plans for Crawley Forest School. The ‘consultation letter’ was sent to residents by the Home Office, care of the private consultation firm CgMs Consulting. The school itself, which has been told to vacate the property by the 1st April, were unaware of the plans until they were contacted by campaigners. Around 35 locals attended the first public meeting concerning the facility, held in the neighbouring village of Pancross last Wednesday (16th). No Borders activist Ian Bros told SchNEWS: “The general feeling was that they were concerned about the value of their property and people possibly jumping over the fence - and about protesters outside. There were, however, some at the meeting who could see the wider picture and the need to end the detention of children and not fudge the whole thing with this ‘detention-lite’ centre.”

* See corporatewatch.org.uk