Voters in a small village headed to the polls for an independence vote over government plans to house asylum seekers at a nearby former Ministry of Defence (MoD) site. The residents of Piddington, in Oxfordshire, voted over Home Office proposals to house up to 1,256 male asylum seekers at MoD Bicester. The symbolic referendum on whether to leave the UK has been organised by the local parish council, with polling taking place between 07:00 and 19:00 BST. Ahead of the vote, council chair Tim McNally said the government “does not want to engage with villagers concerns”.
“They actually have played every possible trick in the book to avoid engagement,” he said. “If we’ve got to do something, it has to be proportionate, and that is not proportionate – that is us having to assimilate into them, not them assimilating into us.” A spokesperson for the prime minister told the BBC that the government was “working to fairly house asylum seekers across the country”. They said the government was “engaging with local authorities to reduce the impact on communities and we’ve saved taxpayers more than £1bn on asylum support costs since the election”. “The Home Office has submitted an application to obtain planning permission to use the Bicester site for asylum accommodation, but it remains the case that no final decision has been taken on the site’s future use,” the spokesperson added.
But speaking outside Piddington village hall on Tuesday, one villager said when it came to holding the vote: “We wouldn’t do this lightly.” “I think when you see a village like this feeling that they need to hold a referendum it sends a really powerful message to the government that we’re being ignored and disenfranchised,” he told the BBC. Tuesday’s ballot paper asked residents to respond either yes or no to the statement: “I support Piddington seeking to secede from the United Kingdom and pursuing self-determination.” The outcome of the referendum, which holds no legal weight and bares a resemblance to the classic Ealing comedy Passport to Pimlico, is expected to be announced on Wednesday morning. Having just cast his vote, Herbert Owen said the referendum was not “just about Piddington”. “It means everything our grandparents, our parents fought for – today is the Battle of Britain,” he said.
His wife, Jennifer Owen, said: “We can’t actually leave the United Kingdom, but it just brings things out in the open more for the country as a whole.” She added that the proposals would “change our lives forever” if it were to go ahead. The Home Office first announced its plans for MoD Bicester in June. “We are working to fairly house asylum seekers across the country, moving asylum seekers into alternative accommodation,” a spokesperson said. This, the spokesperson said, included former military sites that were “designed to be self-contained to reduce impact on the local community”.
But that is not how many people in Piddington see the proposals, with 96% of voters supporting a referendum on independence from the UK in a vote held on 4 July – a date synonymous with another declaration of independence from the British state. Last week, ahead of Tuesday’s vote, 133 women from the village wrote to every female Member of Parliament saying “life as we know it will be destroyed” if the plans succeed. “We will not feel safe walking our streets. We are already living in fear,” they wrote.
An asylum seeker is someone who wants to be in the UK because they say they cannot live safely in their own country due to persecution or violence. The government must house an asylum seeker if they cannot financially support themselves while their claim is being considered. There were 89,089 people in asylum accommodation as of June 2026. About 18% of those people, 16,021, were in hotels.
These are used when there is not enough shared housing available, such as houses of multiple occupation (HMOs) or former military sites. The government has pledged to stop the use of hotels by 2029. More people are in hotels across the south of England than elsewhere in the UK, while HMOs are more common in the north of England and Scotland. Type in a postcode or the name of a local council below to see how many asylum seekers are housed in the area A total of 85,891 people applied for asylum in the UK from July 2025 to June 2026.
This was down by 21% on the same period in the previous year. Most people who arrive in the UK by small boat claim asylum, but they were only 40% of all asylum seekers from July 2025 to June 2026. The rest include people who arrived by other illegal means or who came to the UK legally and applied for asylum while holding, or just after holding, a valid visa. It can take years for the government to decide whether someone should be granted asylum.
In June 2026, 40,168 people – across 32,401 asylum applications – were waiting for an initial decision. The number of people awaiting an initial decision was down by 56% on the previous year. As of June 2026, a further 90,341 refused asylum applications were part of a second backlog, waiting the outcome of an appeal in the courts. This was up by 51% on the previous year.
Together, these initial decision and appeal cases form the government’s total asylum applications backlog, which it has pledged to clear. Refugee status was granted in about 38% of asylum decisions made by the Home Office from July 2025 to June 2026. About 39% of asylum appeal cases concluded between January 2026 to December 2026 resulted in a previous refusal decision being overturned. The government’s proposals for MoD Bicester, which is about half a mile (0.8kms) down the road from Piddington, are currently going through a public consultation.
It had previously made an Urgent Crown Development application, a special procedure to fast-track the process due to its “national importance”. Planning documents released by the Home Office last week said the MoD Bicester development “aims to be as self-contained as possible with Service Users having access to a range of essential facilities on site”. “Consequently, the need to travel will be significantly reduced,” the documents said, before adding that Home Office shuttle buses and public transport could be used to access nearby towns and villages. In 2005, the then-Labour government abandoned plans for an asylum seekers’ accommodation centre on the same site, external.
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