RAF Wethersfield: Asylum Accommodation Profile

RAF Wethersfield was a front-line RAF station, home to US Air Force units during the Cold War, and later used by the Ministry of Defence Police. It sits on a large rural site between Braintree and Saffron Walden in north Essex.

In July 2023 it opened as one of the Home Office's first three large-scale non-hotel asylum accommodation sites, alongside the Bibby Stockholm barge and the continued use of Napier Barracks. The House of Commons Library briefing on asylum accommodation documents Wethersfield as one of the main operational large sites, with a 9-month maximum stay for residents^[4].

On 26 June 2026 Braintree District Council said that Wethersfield will stay open beyond 2027 and that its standard capacity will rise from 800 to 1,245^[5]Council. Essex County News reported on 3 August 2026 that the local MP said the government had announced plans to extend the use of the site to 2029. That date is the MP's account, not a quoted Home Office document^[6]Press.

The Home Office's Wethersfield factsheet, updated on 9 September 2026, says the site has 1,245 bedspaces^[7]GOV.UK. That is a capacity, not a count of residents. The factsheet also says that the conditions which restricted occupancy to 580 bedspaces were confirmed as discharged on 31 January 2025. The last published count of residents we have found is the National Audit Office's: 576 single adult males at the end of January 2024, against the 1,445 the Home Office had expected^[8]NAO.

The National Audit Office's March 2024 investigation into alternative asylum accommodation produced the most authoritative public cost figure for Wethersfield. Its projection was that, on the Home Office's cost trackers of January 2024, the site would cost approximately £338 million over the four years 2023-24 to 2026-27, if it stays open^[1]. Figure 6 of the report splits the £338.7 million into £105.1 million for site acquisition, lease and set-up, £176.0 million of running costs and £57.6 million of other costs^[2]NAO.

The £105.1 million is a one-off, all of it in 2023-24. The category is site acquisition, lease and set-up, and the NAO's note 4 says that for Wethersfield and Scampton it also includes the transfer price for the site and the lease costs arising before the transfer. The report separately says set-up costs had risen to £49 million for Wethersfield. We do not add that £49 million to the £105.1 million, because the category already includes set-up: the one-off cost in the projection is £105.1 million^[2]NAO.

Year by year, the same table projects £145.7 million for 2023-24, £66.5 million for 2024-25 and £63.3 million for each of 2025-26 and 2026-27. For each of those last two years that is running costs of £49.8 million plus other costs of £13.5 million, with the one-off £105.1 million excluded. These are the Home Office's projections, reported by the NAO^[2]NAO, and the only yearly figures published for the site. The homepage counter has no separate Wethersfield line: it uses the NAO's 2024-25 breakdown, in which the site's cost for that year falls inside the accommodation and support figure. It is a January 2024 projection whose capacity basis the NAO does not state, made before the Home Office told Braintree District Council in June 2026 that standard capacity would rise from 800 to 1,245^[5]Council. A written ministerial statement of 29 June 2026 says the Government will seek to expand the capacity and duration of use at Wethersfield^[9]GOV.UK. We have found no updated projection and no yearly outturn.

The NAO also produced a combined figure of roughly £230 million already spent on four large sites (Wethersfield, Scampton, Napier, and a former Huddersfield student site) by March 2024. Because Wethersfield is operationally far larger than the others, the bulk of that £230 million is attributable to Wethersfield rather than evenly split across all four^[1].

The NAO's headline conclusion, that the large-sites programme is expected to cost more than hotels and deliver fewer places than originally planned, rests heavily on Wethersfield^[1]NAO. The Home Office's own later estimate points the other way: the Home Affairs Committee reported in October 2025 that the Home Office estimates Wethersfield is now less costly to run per person per night than hotels, at £132 against £144.98, citing the minister's letter of 8 October 2025. The Committee understood the £132 to exclude set-up costs; that is the Committee's reading, not the minister's wording^[3]GOV.UK.

The projection covers three groups of cost. These are the values in Figure 6 of the NAO's report (table cells, from Home Office cost trackers of January 2024), in £ million:^[2]NAO

These are projections, not settled accounts. Running costs depend on occupancy levels and contract renewals^[1]NAO.