Residents of Piddington are taking part in a symbolic referendum on whether the Oxfordshire village should remain part of the UK, amid plans to accommodate up to 1,250 asylum seekers at a former military camp near Bicester.
The ballot has been organised by the village’s parish council and residents after ministers rejected pleas against moving single male asylum seekers into the camp, which is located a couple of miles away. The result is expected at about 7am on Wednesday.
With a population of roughly 350, Piddington could see asylum seekers outnumber local residents by almost four to one if the site reaches capacity. Campaigners say the proposed arrangement would leave women in the village outnumbered by about ten to one.
The vote is expected to favour independence, although it has no legal effect. Organisers hope it will draw attention in Westminster to their concerns and encourage other communities to stage similar ballots.
Members of the parish council said hundreds of villages had contacted them for advice on replicating the campaign. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has also said he would support areas wishing to hold comparable votes.
The Government is moving asylum seekers into military barracks as part of efforts to end the use of hotels and reduce accommodation costs. It has not clarified how long the Bicester site would be used.
Residents raise safety concerns
More than 20 women in Piddington have signed up for self-defence classes after residents said police had advised them to take precautions ahead of the asylum seekers’ arrival.
On Sunday, the Ladies of Piddington sent an open letter to all female MPs, warning: “Our safety, our security and our freedoms will be under threat.” They said only four of the 226 MPs contacted had replied: Conservative MPs Joy Morrissey and Sarah Bool, and Reform MPs Sarah Pochin and Suella Braverman.
Louise Brooker, 51, said the village, which has neither a pub nor a shop, would effectively be “on lockdown” once the migrants arrived.
“I won’t feel safe walking along the road,” she said. “And that’s in the daylight. In the winter here, when it’s dark at 4pm, the very few streetlights that we have don’t stay on all night.”
Melise Witkin, 59, said the issue was one of safety rather than wealth or social background. “We are 356 people in the village with 46 children and 1,250 men turning up is a recipe for disaster,” she said.
Another resident, a mother of three, said her family’s lives had been “changed forever” by the plans. Other residents questioned why the Government had not provided data on criminality among migrants in the UK.
The parish council has also complained that it was given only ten days to respond to a 1,000-word planning document for the proposed camp.
The Bicester site is one of three former military bases proposed for asylum accommodation. Camps at Crowborough in East Sussex and Wethersfield in Essex have already opened, while asylum seekers are free to leave the sites and travel into surrounding villages.
During a visit to Piddington, Ms Braverman described the scale of the proposed accommodation as “stark”. She said: “This will dramatically transform the character of the village. These are the wrong plans for this village, and you know only harm and damage will come from it.”
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp and Ms Morrissey also met residents. Mr Philp said mothers and grandmothers were “clearly terrified” about the safety of their families, and argued that the plans showed the need to remove the Labour Government and leave the European Convention on Human Rights.
