RAF Scampton, the former home of the Dambusters, will not be used to house asylum seekers because the plan does not represent value for money, the Home Office has said.
The former airbase in Lincolnshire was at the heart of a plan by the previous, Conservative government to accommodate people who arrive in the UK by small boats and other unauthorised means.
Opening the site from the autumn as planned would have cost a total of £122m by the end of its use in 2027, and the Home Office said this no longer represented value for money.
A total of £60m has already been spent on the site, according to the department, and work to close it will begin immediately. Its sale will be conducted in line with an established process for the disposal of crown land.
Angela Eagle, a Home Office minister, said: “Faster asylum processing, increased returns and tighter enforcement of immigration rules will reduce demand for accommodation like Scampton and save millions for the taxpayer as we drive forward work to clear the asylum backlog and strengthen our border security. We have also listened to community feedback and concerns about using this site for asylum accommodation.”
The move comes after the government scrapped the Rwanda plan drawn up under the Tories aimed at deterring migrants from crossing the Channel in small boats.
The 617 squadron – the Dambusters – was formed at the airfield, from where 19 Lancaster bombers departed for the famous raid in 1943 to destroy three dams in the Ruhr Valley in Germany’s industrial heartlands with “bouncing bombs” designed by the renowned engineer Barnes Wallis.
Forty historians including Antony Beevor, Max Hastings and Dan Snow wrote to the Home Office describing the plans to use the historic site as an asylum camp as an act of “cultural desecration”.
“To erase Scampton’s heritage, rather than preserve, protect and enhance it further, would be a scandalous desecration of immeasurable recklessness,” they said.
In May the Home Office agreed to more than halve the number of asylum seekers to be housed on the former RAF base, from 2,000 to 800, and to hand over 90% of the site to West Lindsey district council.
