Crowborough Army Camp: ministers will decide 2030 plan

The Home Office will not ask Wealden District Council for permission to keep using Crowborough Army Training Camp until 2030. It will apply directly to the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government instead. The council was notified on 2 September, and says it is being bypassed as the local planning authority. (Wealden District Council, 2 September 2026)

The route is called Urgent Crown Development. It changes who decides, what gets published and how long anyone has to respond.

Councillor Rachel Millward, Alliance for Wealden (Green Party) and Leader of Wealden District Council, said the council “remains opposed to the Home Office’s use of Crowborough Army Camp as asylum accommodation and its route to seek planning permission”. The council will still submit views through the formal process, and says it will tell residents how and when they can have their say.

What Urgent Crown Development is

The procedure sits in sections 293B to 293C of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. The detail is in the Town and Country Planning (Crown Development) (Urgent Applications) (Procedure) (England) Order 2025. It was created by the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, replacing an older urgency power from 2006. (MHCLG planning practice guidance, paragraph 027)

In short:

• The applicant applies to the Secretary of State, not to the council.
• The Secretary of State has to be satisfied that the development is both nationally important and genuinely needed as a matter of urgency.
• The applicant must show that the timetable could not be met by other routes, including the ordinary Crown Development route, and must set out the consequences of not getting a decision in time.
• Wealden becomes a consultee rather than the decision maker.

Other bodies are consulted where the Secretary of State considers their interests are affected: Natural England, the Environment Agency, National Highways, the Coal Authority, Historic England, the local highway authority and the Health and Safety Executive. The guidance says this consultation will be expedited and is likely to involve direct engagement rather than a standard process. (Planning practice guidance, paragraph 062)

Whether residents get to comment is a discretion, not a duty

This is the part that separates the urgent route from the ordinary one, and it is worth being precise about.

Under the standard Crown Development route, publicity is fixed. The council must display a site notice for 21 days. The Planning Inspectorate must arrange a notice in a local newspaper. It must publish a deadline for representations of no less than 21 days. (Planning practice guidance, paragraph 049)

Under the urgent route, none of that is guaranteed. Article 10 of the 2025 Order says the Secretary of State “may” publish an address for representations and a period for making them. (The Town and Country Planning (Crown Development) (Urgent Applications) (Procedure) (England) Order 2025, article 10)

If a period is published, three things follow. The Secretary of State must not decide the application before it closes. Representations received inside it must be taken into account. Anything arriving after it may be disregarded.

Two duties apply whatever the Secretary of State decides about publicity:

• Representations that reach Wealden must be forwarded to the Secretary of State as soon as practicable. (Article 20)
• The Secretary of State must tell anyone who asks where the documents are published online, and where they can be inspected in person. (Article 9)

Harder duties apply only if the scheme counts as EIA development, meaning development likely to have significant environmental effects. Then a site notice must run for at least 30 days and statutory consultees get at least 30 days. Nobody has yet said whether this application will be EIA development.

A near identical case is running right now

On the same day the Home Office notified Wealden, an almost identical application was validated elsewhere. The Home Office applied under the urgent route for asylum accommodation for up to 1,256 people at Bicester Garrison in Oxfordshire, about 100 miles from Crowborough. It was validated on 2 September 2026. (Urgent Crown Development application: MOD Bicester (Site A))

The government’s page for that case sets out exactly what happens and when:

• The representation period opens on 7 September 2026 and closes on 17 September 2026.
• Comments go by email to Crowncasework@communities.gov.uk, and will not be acknowledged individually.
• Only points that raise material planning considerations will be taken into account.
• Documents are to be available for inspection at Cherwell District Council’s offices and, on request, at MHCLG’s Birmingham office.
• Some documents are withheld. The Secretary of State has directed that they are sensitive under section 293B(11) of the 1990 Act.

That is a ten-day window. The length is set case by case, so a Crowborough window could be longer or shorter, but Bicester is the closest guide available.

There is one completed precedent. The Home Office used the same route for an initial triage and processing centre at the former RAF Manston in Kent. That application was validated on 24 February 2026 and the government’s page now records it as approved. (Urgent Crown Development application: Manston)

Nothing has been lodged yet

The government publishes accepted applications in one place, a collection page for Crown Development and Urgent Crown Development applications and decisions. We checked it on Saturday 6 September. It listed two current urgent applications, Bicester and Manston. There was no Crowborough entry. (Crown Development and Urgent Crown Development applications and decisions)

When an application is accepted, three things should follow. It gets published on that government page. Wealden must place a copy on its own planning register. And the local MP is notified, with that notification deposited in the libraries of both Houses of Parliament.

The site as it stands

From the Home Office’s own factsheet for the camp, version 3.0, dated August 2026: (Crowborough Training Camp, East Sussex: factsheet)

• The site began accommodating asylum seekers on 22 January 2026.
• Full capacity is 540, being reached in phases. The Home Office does not publish current numbers.
• It is run for the Home Office by Clearsprings Ready Homes.
• Residents are single adult men aged 18 to 65.
• The Ministry of Defence has agreed use until January 2030, subject to planning permission, after which the Home Office intends to return the site.

The council’s own August update said the site was operating close to that capacity, and that protests continue outside it on Sunday mornings. (Wealden District Council, Crowborough Army Camp)

What it means for you

There is nothing to comment on today, and that is the practical problem. On this route the gap between an application appearing and a deadline closing can be short.

• Watch the government’s collection page, not just the council’s. That is where the application appears first.
• If a representation period opens and runs like Bicester’s, you would have about ten days. Work out in advance what you want to say.
• Only material planning considerations count. Traffic, drainage, noise, ecology, highways safety and the effect on local services are planning matters. Objections to asylum policy itself are not.
• Comments sent to Wealden must be passed on, so writing to the council is not wasted, but emailing the Crown Casework Team directly is more direct.
• Anyone can ask the Secretary of State where the documents can be inspected in person.

We will publish the reference number, the deadline and the inspection address as soon as the application is accepted. Our earlier report on the state of the planning record for the camp and our roundup of planning decisions across the district have the background.