An English village of around 350 people announced on Wednesday (September 16, 2026) that a vast majority of residents had voted yes in an “independence referendum” staged to protest plans to house over 1,200 migrants in a nearby facility.

Piddington in central England, 25 kilometres (15 miles) from the university city of Oxford, has grabbed headlines with its tongue-in-cheek breakaway vote.

The village’s parish council announced that with 312 ballots counted, 285 had voted to secede from Britain over plans to house asylum seekers in a nearby disused military site, in a symbolic vote with no recognised legal basis.

Residents were handed a ballot paper with the statement: “I support Piddington seeking to secede from the United Kingdom and pursuing self-determination.”

The local parish council chair Tim McNally said that the village will now be known as the “principality of Piddington”.

Mr. McNally told Sky News: “For us, it’s about proportionality — how does a small village of 350 odd people assimilate with 1,250 males?”

He accused the government of “trying to rush this whole plan through”.

“I think what this result shows is that Piddington campaigners have done an incredible job to highlight their concerns about the proposed asylum centre,” the leader of Oxfordshire county council, Tim Bearder, told the BBC.

The council chief warned the planned centre “will be a lightning rod to the far right, who come here to protest” and “potentially attack” asylum seekers.

But Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy told the BBC that a former military base “is a better option for housing asylum seekers” than hotels or rented accommodation.

“We do have to house people somewhere while we get a grip on the asylum chaos and that base will go ahead,” she said.

Around Britain, regular protests have been staged in towns and villages against the housing of asylum seekers in hotels and other facilities.

The Piddington referendum was a play on the British comedy film “Passport to Pimlico”.

In the 1949 classic, a small group of Londoners discover treasure and declare independence making them exempt from post-war rationing and other bureaucratic restrictions.

“I voted to leave the United Kingdom,” 76-year-old Piddington resident Herbert Owen, told AFP during the vote, saying it felt like the government did not “care” about the bucolic village in the Oxfordshire countryside.

“We have a village hall, a 12th-century church and a playing field — and that’s it,” another villager Ian Darby, 63, said, questioning how the migrants would spend their time.

“It is a takeover of our village, it’s four times the people of this village. They are going to want to get out and about (locally) and that raises serious issues,” he said.

“I’ve lived here, my whole life. I won’t really feel safe enough to walk around anymore,” 17-year-old student and part-time stablehand Dita Jackson told AFP.

According to the government, the proposed centre would be used for a minimum of 10 years to house single adult male asylum seekers.

The “safety and security” of the migrants, staff at the base and the local community would be “of the utmost importance”, it said.

The centre-left Labour Party, in power since July 2024, is phasing out the use of hotels as migrant accommodation, a policy it inherited from the previous Conservative government.

It has vowed to completely end their use by the end of this parliament, due in 2029, turning instead to ex-military bases.

Published – September 16, 2026 03:10 pm IST

Controversial UK government plans for deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda cleared their final hurdle on Monday, after a marathon tussle between the upper and lower chambers of parliament lasting late into the night. 

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his ruling Conservatives have been seeking to push through legislation that will compel judges to regard the east African nation as a safe third country. 

They also want to give decision-makers on asylum applications the power to disregard sections of international and domestic human rights law to get around a UK Supreme Court ruling that sending migrants on a one-way ticket to Kigali was illegal. 

But the government faced a parliamentary battle to do so, with the upper chamber House of Lords, which scrutinises bills, repeatedly sending the proposed legislation back to the lower House of Commons with amendments. 

Peers, who have criticised the bill as inadequate, notably wanted a requirement that Rwanda could not be treated as safe until an independent monitoring body said so. 

They also wanted an exemption for agents, allies and employees of the UK overseas, including Afghans who fought alongside British armed forces, from being removed. 

MPs in the Commons, where the Tories have a majority, voted down every amendment and asked the Lords to think again in a back-and-forth process known as “parliamentary ping pong”.

The unelected upper chamber, where there is no overall majority for any party, dug in their heels. 

But shortly before midnight (2300 GMT) they eventually conceded to the will of elected MPs and agreed to make no further amendments, ending the deadlock and ensuring the bill will now receive royal assent to pass into law. 

Sunak’s government has been under mounting pressure to cut record numbers of asylum seekers crossing the Channel from northern France in small boats, particularly following a promise of a tougher approach to immigration after the UK left the European Union. 

Challenges 

The Rwanda scheme — criticised by UN human rights experts and groups supporting asylum seekers — has been beset by legal challenges since it was first proposed in 2022. 

That year, the first deportees were pulled off a flight at the last minute after an injunction from the European Court of Human Rights. Two years on, no migrants have been sent. 

The National Audit Office, a public spending watchdog, has estimated it will cost 540 million UK pounds ($665 million) to deport the first 300 migrants — nearly 2 million pounds per person. 

Charities have said the scheme is unworkable and, given the small numbers involved, would do little to cut the backlog of asylum claims. 

Other critics say it sets a dangerous precedent of parliament legislating on an issue already deemed illegal by the courts, and will damage the UK’s international standing and moral authority. 

Rwanda — a tiny nation of 13 million people — lays claim to being one of the most stable countries in Africa. But rights groups accuse veteran President Paul Kagame of ruling in a climate of fear, stifling dissent and free speech. 

Sunak announced earlier on Monday that the government was ready and had plans in place for the first flights to take off in 10 to 12 weeks, promising a wave of deportations “come what may” over the summer months. 

The prime minister is banking on the flagship “stop the boats” policy to act as a deterrent and give his beleaguered Tory party an electoral boost as the country prepares to go to the polls later this year.

The Conservatives have consistently trailed the main opposition Labour party in opinion polls and are on course to be dumped out of power after 14 years. 

Sunak’s plans could still be held up by legal challenges, and UN rights experts have suggested that airlines and aviation regulators could fall foul of internationally protected human rights laws if they take part in deportations. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)