The Home Office will argue that Channel small boat crossings are a national “emergency” in a bid to overcome resistance to using a former RAF base as asylum accommodation.
The High Court is to hear Braintree District Council’s application for an injunction preventing the transformation of Wethersfield airfield on Wednesday.
“We remain of the view that Wethersfield Airfield is an unsuitable site to house asylum seekers, given the lack of capacity in local services, its isolated location and the fact that the scale of the development proposed could have a significant impact upon the local community,” a spokesperson for the council said.
The Independent understands that lawyers representing home secretary Suella Braverman are to argue that the plans fall under powers for “emergencies” under a 2015 law, meaning that normal planning processes do not apply.
A rule known as Class Q allows local councils to be bypassed for developments on government land, including military bases, for the purpose of “preventing an emergency, reducing, controlling or mitigating the effects of an emergency or taking other action in connection with an emergency”.
The law states that in those circumstances, local planning authorities must only be “notified” of a development rather than consulted to grant permission.
But it stipulates that the bar is only met when situations “threaten serious damage” to human welfare, the environment or security of the UK, and gives examples including illness, injury and homelessness.
Mr Justice Waksman will hear legal arguments from the Home Office, Ministry of Defence and Braintree District Council on Wednesday, and decide whether to grant the injunction over the former Wethersfield RAF base.
The council previously said it had been told that asylum seekers would not be moved to the location until the case was decided, but that it had “not yet stopped the Home Office from starting to prepare the site for asylum seeker accommodation”.
Huge backlogs in asylum decisions and rising numbers of people arriving on small boats has left around 51,000 people being housed in hotels, because of a shortage of proper accommodation.
Wethersfield is one of several military bases targeted by the government as potential sites to accommodate thousands of asylum seekers, ahead of an expected surge in small boat crossings over the summer.
An announcement last month sparked a furious backlash from Conservative MPs and councils, who argue they have not been properly consulted and that the chosen sites are unsuitable.
Under the separate Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, the government is giving itself powers to bypass normal planning permission for asylum accommodation and other urgent developments “of national importance”.
New laws being considered by the House of Lords would allow the housing secretary, currently Michael Gove, to take decisions on the use of government-owned land instead of local authorities.
A new process would make the currently required consultations with local communities optional, rather than legally necessary, and councils would have no power to veto major developments.
The power could be used for applications “of national importance” where it is “necessary that the development is carried out as a matter of urgency”.
Ministers have confirmed that the law would cover “development needed on Crown land to accommodate an influx of refugees”.
The Home Office has called the current cost of hotels, at £6m a day, was “unacceptable” and said it was “committed to making every effort to reduce hotel use and limit the burden on the taxpayer”.
