On 29 July 2026, These Walls Must Fall (a network of lived-experience campaigners challenging the injustice of the asylum and immigration system) called a public meeting to bring people together to discuss how we oppose the expansion of Haslar Immigration Removal Centre in Gosport. 

This follows the recent consultation on the expansion of Campsfield IRC, which closed on 24 July. The consultation to expand Haslar is open until Thursday 6 August 2026 at 11:59pm. Together, Campsfield and Haslar form part of the Home Office’s plan to expand the detention estate by around 1,000 beds. Campsfield re-opened in December 2025 with 160 beds and the proposed plans seek to expand the site to 400 spaces, and Haslar, which has not even reopened yet, is being proposed for expansion from 130 beds to 600, potentially making it the biggest detention centre in the UK, even bigger that the notorious Brook House detention centre. 

This massive expansion of detention bedspace is part of the infrastructure of enforcement. It is state violence at community level, and it could lay the groundwork for future mass deportation programmes which are now audible. 

The meeting opened with a statement from These Walls Must Fall, read by Right to Remain Director Eiri:

“Many of us have lived through this system ourselves. We have seen our friends taken into detention and later return to our communities carrying deep trauma. They come back with damaged mental health, fear and anxiety. Some are no longer the same people they were before detention. No human being should be subjected to that.“

Haslar sits in a very different political context to Campsfield. In Gosport, Conservative and Reform parties  have a strong presence locally, and the area has also faced far-right violence. For this reason, we held the meeting under Chatham House rule.

Right to Remain’s Lead Legal Education Officer, Ally, outlined some of the key objections to the Haslar application.

The Home Office has applied through the Crown Development Route. This is not the normal local planning process but a national planning process where anyone can object. For Haslar, the application is for outline planning permission, with only access being decided at this stage. That means the Planning Inspectorate is being asked to decide whether the expansion should be allowed in principle, while important details about layout, appearance, landscaping and the detailed scale of buildings may be left until later. If outline permission is granted now, the basic principle of expanding Haslar into a much larger detention centre would already have been accepted. Later stages would usually focus on how the expansion is built, rather than reopening the question of whether the expansion should happen at all. This consultation is therefore an important opportunity to oppose the expansion itself.

We also talked about the planning issues as these are important points that the Planning Inspectorate will focus on. For Haslar these include flood risk, ecology, heritage, transport, local infrastructure, public scrutiny and whether the Home Office has made its case. We explain these in our template objections letter.  These issues are not separate from harm – they show the different ways the cruelty of detention reaches beyond the fence, into communities, services, land and ecosystems. The Home Office’s approach continually disregards the importance of life and treats land, people and ecosystems as things to be controlled, enclosed, offset or moved out of the way.

Because of the local political context, some objections will come from anti-migrant “not here” politics, and there are already Haslar submissions like this. That makes it vital that the public record also includes human rights, lived-experience and solidarity objections.

Ally highlighted sources people can use to name detention harm, including the Independent Monitoring Board 2025 national annual report. The report shows harm in detention is systemic, not exceptional: prolonged detention, failed safeguards, healthcare delays, barriers to legal advice and interpreting, routine use of force and isolation, self-harm and suicide attempts. There is also a powerful submission from a person who was previously detained at Campsfield on the Planning Inspectorate website which you can read here.

The meeting was not just a technical briefing. Local community members and long-time anti-detention activists connected to Haslar shared their experience of opposing detention in Gosport, and we discussed how we can join together and bring more people into the fight.

Close Campsfield Coalition also shared lessons from their recent work opposing the Campsfield expansion. Alongside online submissions, they organised local outreach and collected signatures on physical objection letters to send directly into the Crown Development process. In total, 249 submissions were made through the Planning Inspectorate website. 

These Walls Must Fall Organiser Maggy called on us to cast the net wider. Detention is not just a migration justice issue. Its harms are carried by families, schools, healthcare workers, advice services, trade unions, faith groups and communities, the people who support those released from detention and pick up the pieces after the Home Office has caused harm. She called for trade unions, schools, healthcare providers, community groups, parliamentarians and international allies to be part of the conversation. 

There are only seven days left to object – the consultation closes on Thursday 6 August. This is not just a local issue for Gosport. People detained at Haslar could be taken from anywhere in the UK, and people released from Haslar could return to communities anywhere in the UK. The harm of detention is felt by entire communities who are left to pick up the pieces. The impact of Haslar is felt by all of us. We need people to spread the word, use the template, help others submit objections, and make sure the public record is not left only to the Home Office, technical consultants, and those objecting from fear or hostility.