Nesscliff Training Area

The Nesscliff Training Area sits at Nesscliffe in Shropshire, around 11 km north west of Shrewsbury. It is a Ministry of Defence training estate. The NHS trust that worked with the Ministry of Defence on the camp reports that Afghan civilians began arriving there in October 2023^[3]GOV.UK. It was transitional accommodation for ARAP arrivals, and not part of the wider Home Office asylum hotel programme.

The Shropshire Star reported in November 2023 that the Home Office had shared its plans to temporarily house around 200 Afghan individuals, a mixture of single people and families, at Nesscliffe Barracks. That was a plan, not a count of the people who stayed. The reporting clarified that the cohort would be moved on within weeks and that residents had the right to be in the country under ARAP rather than as asylum-seekers^[1]Press.

Shropshire Council's ARAP page was explicit that the Nesscliff site was being used for the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy, the government's scheme that offers Afghan nationals who worked for or with the UK government relocation to the UK. The site is described as transitional accommodation, with residents expected to stay no more than six weeks before being moved on to a settled housing option, which could be anywhere in the UK^[2]GOV.UK.

That distinction matters for the public record: ARAP residents are not part of the Home Office asylum dispersal estate that this tracker primarily covers, even though both schemes have used MoD sites and have attracted protest activity in recent years.

Nesscliff Training Area is a Ministry of Defence estate, and its accommodation costs fall on the MoD Afghan resettlement budget rather than on the Home Office asylum hotel programme, so no cost is estimated for it here and none is counted in any asylum capacity, cost or total on this website. No cost figure for the camp has been published.