Court of Appeal grants permission to appeal in Wethersfield asylum accommodation challenge

The Court of Appeal has granted permission to appeal against the Administrative Court’s decision in TG and others v SSHD [2025] EWHC 596 (Admin). The appeal is brought by MJ, an asylum seeker who was accommodated at the former Wethersfield barracks.

MJ’s appeal raises three grounds, including whether the High Court applied the correct approach to evaluating evidence, the correct legal test for adequacy under asylum support legislation and Article 3 ECHR, and whether the Home Secretary’s Allocation Policy properly addresses the risk of harm to asylum seekers’ health.

Singh LJ granted permission to appeal on all grounds, finding that they were arguable and raised points of general public importance.

MJ is represented by Alex Goodman KC, Miranda Butler and Charles Bishop, instructed by Duncan Lewis.

The claim

This claim concerns the former barracks at Wethersfield, which is now used to house asylum seekers. A number of asylum seekers, including ‘MJ’, challenged their accommodation there on the grounds that it was not adequate accommodation for him. In his judgment of 14 March 2025, Mr Justice Mould (‘the Judge’) found that the asylum provided at Wethersfield was adequate, although he allowed claims brought by other claimants that there had been a breach of the Public Sector Equality Duty regarding the provision of accommodation to asylum seekers with disabilities. He also found that Wethersfield was not adequate accommodation for three of the claimants.

The appeal

MJ has appealed on three grounds:

1. The Judge erred in finding that the Home Secretary’s evidence is correct unless “persuaded that it is internally contradictory, inherently implausible, or inconsistent with incontrovertible evidence”, rather than also asking whether the evidence was, on balance, inconsistent with other written evidence.
2. The Judge applied an incorrect test to the question of whether the Home Secretary was discharging her duty under ss. 95 and 96 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 and regulation 5 of the Asylum Support Regulations 2005 in that he asked himself whether the system was so deficient as to be incapable of providing adequate accommodation rather than assessing whether the provision of accommodation at Wethersfield creates a significant risk of a breach of Article 3 ECHR.
3. The Judge failed to address MJ’s argument that the Home Secretary’s Suitability Criteria contained in her Allocation Policy (which governs which asylum seekers can be sent to camps such as Wethersfield) do not direct her caseworkers to ask the correct legal question, namely whether accommodation will be harmful to asylum seekers’ health with the result that it no longer meets the statutory requirement of adequacy. Alternatively, the Judge erred in (i) his interpretation of “adequate” accommodation within the meaning of s. 95/96 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999; and (ii) the Suitability Criteria contained in the Allocation Policy.

Permission granted

Singh LJ granted permission to appeal on all grounds, finding that they were arguable and raised points of general public importance.

Alex Goodman KC, Miranda Butler, and Charles Bishop act for MJ, instructed by Duncan Lewis.