Piddington votes to leave UK over asylum housing plan

A small Oxfordshire village has voted overwhelmingly to leave the United Kingdom in a symbolic protest against government plans to house up to 1,256 male asylum seekers at a former military site nearby.

Residents of Piddington, near Bicester, voted 285 to 26 in favor of “seceding from the UK and pursuing self-determination,” with one spoiled ballot. The parish council-organized referendum drew 312 votes, a turnout of nearly 92% in a village of about 350 people. The result has no legal force.

The vote was aimed at Home Office proposals to use MoD Bicester, a former military base about half a mile from Piddington, as non-detained asylum accommodation, meaning residents would be able to come and go. The Home Office has said the site would operate for 10 years.

Delivering the result outside the village hall, parish council vice chair Susannah Parden said: “We are Piddington the village that roars.” Tim McNally, chair of Piddington Parish Council and a leader of the campaign against the facility, called the vote “an example of democracy in operation.”

“We went into this village hall as the underdogs — we had a plucky idea. We have given a message to the world,” McNally said, according to the BBC.

Residents have said they were not properly consulted and raised concerns about safety, crime, public services and the effect on daily life. More than 130 women in the village wrote to every female member of Parliament, saying, “Our safety, our security and our freedoms will be under threat. We will not feel safe walking our streets.”

Jennifer Owen, who voted to leave the UK, told CBS News: “I’m worried about the safety of the children and the women of the village. The towns won’t be the same, they’ll be overrun, village will be overrun. It just won’t be the same again.” Her husband, Herbert Owen, said he feared the plan would damage house prices and criticized the government for acting “without even talking” to residents.

There is no comprehensive national data showing whether asylum seekers are more or less likely to commit crimes than the wider population. The UK’s Office for National Statistics says it does not hold crime breakdowns by asylum-seeker or migrant status. In Essex, where the government plans to expand an existing asylum accommodation site, Chief Constable Rachel Nolan told the BBC that crime linked to that facility is “very low.”

The referendum was held on Sept. 15, Battle of Britain Day, and a commemorative banner was displayed outside the village hall. McNally told CBS News the campaign also drew inspiration from American history, citing the United States’ 250 years of independence and “the strife and struggle they went through to get their self-determination.”

Prime Minister Andy Burnham told the BBC he understood the village’s “strength of feeling” but said fairness was needed across the country. “We cannot have a situation where it’s only the poorest communities in the country that receive all of the dispersal of refugees and asylum seekers,” he told GB News.

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy told BBC Breakfast the government would not reconsider the MoD Bicester proposal, saying that doing so would shift more pressure onto communities already carrying a heavier burden. “While we get a grip on the asylum chaos that we inherited we do need to make sure that we live up to our obligations and house people coming to this country seeking safety,” she said.

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp, who visited Piddington, called the vote a “wake-up call” and said the village was “sending a message on behalf of the whole country.”

The Home Office announced the Bicester plan in June as part of wider efforts to move asylum seekers out of hotels. The BBC reported that the site, known as “Site A,” lies between Piddington and Upper and Lower Arncott. Similar plans for an asylum accommodation center there were abandoned in 2005.

A public consultation on the current proposal runs until midnight on Sept. 17. Liberal Democrat MP Calum Miller called the consultation a “clear win for local democracy,” while Oxfordshire County Council leader Tim Beader said campaigners had highlighted concerns about both the proposal and the government’s lack of engagement.

Around 100,600 people claimed asylum in the UK in 2025, more than twice the number in 2019, CBS News reported, citing Home Office figures. About 41% had arrived by small boat and 39% had previously entered the country on a visa or other legal permission. Over the past decade, roughly 630,000 people have claimed asylum in the UK, according to government figures.