Council applies for listed status for Dambusters’ officers’ mess in bid to block asylum seeker plan

The government plan to turn the Dambusters squadron’s HQ into a refugee detention centre may be scuppered, as the local council seeks listed status.

West Lindsey District Council has applied for listed status for the officers mess in RAF Scampton, in Lincolnshire, in order to protect the important historic site.

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, the industrial heartland of Germany, with ‘bouncing bombs’. 

But plans to house around 1,500 asylum seekers at the building in RAF Scampton caused the council to take ‘decisive action’.

The council previously announced it had agreed a £300million plan to revive the site, with the scheme aiming to use the 800-acre location for aviation, heritage, tourism, education and research. 

80 years ago, a squadron of the mighty RAF bombers took off on one of the most daring missions of World War II — the celebrated Dambusters Raid. Pictured: The 617 Squadron (Dambusters) at Scampton, Lincolnshire, in 1943

Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, is this week expected to announce plans to turn RAF Scampton and RAF Wethersfield in Braintree, Essex, into asylum centres.

The plan follows a drive from the government to end the use of hotels for migrants, which is costing nearly £7million a day. 

A host of historians, broadcasters and high-ranking RAF veterans previously joined forces and wrote an open letter urging Suella Braverman to reconsider the proposal

They said her plan would erase the site’s heritage, which would be a ‘scandalous desecration of immeasurable recklessness’.

In it, they write: ‘Of course refugees need to be housed in a safe, functional and secure location, but do they need to be taken to a place where there is already an exciting and viable plan to safeguard its future and in a county where such investment is so desperately needed?’

A group of four aircraft hangars at the site are already Grade-II listed. 

Sally Grindrod-Smith, the council’s director of planning, regeneration and communities, said the authority was ‘very concerned about the future of the former officers mess’.

She added: ‘The building appears to be deteriorating rapidly and without due care and attention this important historic feature of the site could be lost forever.

The Dambuster raid: A Lancaster Bomber during the Second World War

RAF Bomber crews of No 83 Squadron in front of a Handley Page Hampden bomber at RAF Scampton, Lincolnshire, October 1940.

‘That is why the council has taken decisive action and made an application to Historic England to seek listed building status.’

The Home Office recently said it ‘continued to work across government and with local authorities to identify a range of accommodation options’.

‘The government remains committed to engaging with local authorities and key stakeholders as part of this process,’ a spokesperson said.