Torture survivors unlawfully housed in army barracks

Court finds failures in policy that placed vulnerable people in former military sites

Torture survivors housed in cramped rooms at a former army barracks were failed by the government in a deliberate policy choice that ignored longstanding medical evidence of harm, after the High Court ruled the Home Secretary acted unlawfully.

Mr Justice Sweeting found on 28 May 2026 that Shabana Mahmood’s government failed to consult organisations working directly with torture survivors and failed to conduct an impact assessment before forcing vulnerable people into shared accommodation at Crowborough Training Camp, East Sussex.

“These failures amount to a serious breach of her public law duties, rendering the impugned policy changes unlawful,” the judge ruled.

The judgment represents a rare legal confrontation with a policy that clinical organisations have warned causes documented harm to some of the most vulnerable people in the asylum system. Approximately 350 people were housed at Crowborough, which opened to asylum seekers in January 2026, with plans for a further 300 at Cameron Barracks in Inverness.

Clinical evidence of retraumatisation

Organisations working with torture survivors had warned repeatedly that barracks-style accommodation causes measurable psychological harm. Freedom From Torture, which works directly with survivors, said the clinical evidence is unequivocal.

“Places like Crowborough subject survivors of torture to overcrowding, a lack of privacy and conditions that only intensify anxiety, panic and hopelessness,” said Ann Salter, Head of Clinical Services North West at Freedom From Torture. “Survivors tell us that living in a former military environment triggers flashbacks and retraumatises.”

Human Rights Watch documented similar harms at previous barracks sites including Napier and Penally, where residents experienced depression, mental health deterioration, disease outbreaks, and inadequate health screening. The organisations found that being placed in a securitised setting that asylum seekers cannot easily leave risks replicating the very environments they fled.

The Helen Bamber Foundation, which provides specialist care for survivors of torture and trafficking, said the decision to force vulnerable people into large accommodation sites was a political choice that ignored evidence from those working with refugees every day.

“This ruling confirms what we have long known: the government placed people who have survived the most traumatic violence in conditions designed to cause further harm,” said Kamena Dorling, Director of the Helen Bamber Foundation.

A Labour government, not just a Conservative one

The policy was introduced in February 2024 under the previous government and continued by the current Labour administration. The Home Secretary herself described Crowborough as “just the start,” signalling ambitions to move thousands of asylum seekers out of hotels and into Ministry of Defence land across the country.

Despite the legal ruling, the government’s approach appears unchanged. A Home Office spokesperson said “lessons have been learned from large sites acquired under the previous government” and that “strict checks are in place to maintain high health and safety standards.”

This framing conceals what the court actually found: that no consultation with affected charities took place, and no impact assessment was conducted despite what the judge described as “longstanding, consistent evidence of the serious risks of harm.”

The unfinished fight

Freedom From Torture estimates that up to 10,000 torture survivors in shared accommodation could be affected by the ruling. But the legal outcome may be temporary. The court found procedural failures, failure to consult and failure to assess, rather than ruling that barracks accommodation itself causes harm. The government could re-run the process and implement the same policy legally.

“This judgment makes clear that the government acted unlawfully in changing its policy,” said Natasha Tsangarides, Associate Director of Advocacy at Freedom From Torture. “We have seen the consequences of those changes: survivors of torture have been placed in harm’s way.”

The strongest counter-argument to this coverage is that the ruling addresses process, not substance, that the government broke administrative law but did not necessarily cause harm. However, the clinical evidence from organisations in direct contact with survivors tell a different story. The judge’s finding that such evidence was known and ignored makes the distinction between procedural and substantive harm largely academic.

What happens next will determine whether this ruling becomes a meaningful correction or a technical footnote. The government has indicated it will “carefully consider” the judgment. Survivors and the charities that represent them are watching to see whether the law is honoured in practice or whether the policy continues under a different procedural wrapper.