Napier barracks to continue housing asylum seekers after small boat influx

Napier barracks near Folkestone is where people are generally taken shortly after arriving across the Channel. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPA

Napier barracks, one of the first mass accommodation sites opened to house asylum seekers, will not be closing as planned in the coming weeks, as the government attempts to deal with an influx of small boats arrivals.

Officials informed parliament in a Home Office document uploaded to parliament’s cross-party home affairs committee in March 2025 that “the Home Office intend to occupy and deliver services at Napier until September 2025, at which point the site will be handed back to the Ministry of Defence”.