Cambridgeshire is a ceremonial county in the East of England and East Anglia. It is bordered by Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to the west. The largest settlement is the city of Peterborough, and the city of Cambridge is the county town.
Peterborough is a cathedral city in the City of Peterborough district in the ceremonial county of Cambridgeshire, England. For many centuries, the city and its surroundings, as the Soke of Peterborough, were part of the historic county of Northamptonshire, but had an independent county council between 1889 and 1965. The city formed part of the short-lived Huntingdon and Peterborough between 1965 and 1974. Though historically part of Northamptonshire, the city has been part of Cambridgeshire since 1974, and is the largest settlement in that county.
The East of England is one of the nine official regions of England in the United Kingdom. This region was created in 1994 and was adopted for statistics purposes from 1999. It includes the ceremonial counties of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. Essex has the highest population in the region.
Serco Group plc is a British multinational defence, health, space, justice, migration, customer services, and transport company. It is headquartered in Hook, Hart, England. The company operates in Continental Europe, the Middle East, the Asia Pacific region, including Australia and Hong Kong, and North America. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.
Since 1945, immigration to the United Kingdom, controlled by British immigration law and to an extent by British nationality law, has been significant, in particular from the Republic of Ireland and from the former British Empire, especially India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Caribbean, South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and Hong Kong. Since the accession of the UK to the European Communities in the 1970s and the creation of the EU in the early 1990s, immigrants relocated from member states of the European Union, exercising one of the European Union's Four Freedoms. In 2021, since Brexit came into effect, previous EU citizenship's right to newly move to and reside in the UK on a permanent basis does not apply anymore. A smaller number have come as asylum seekers seeking protection as refugees under the United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention.
Lunar House is a 20-storey office block in Croydon, in South London. It is situated at 40 Wellesley Road, on its east side, and houses the headquarters of UK Visas and Immigration, a division of the Home Office in the United Kingdom.
Immigration detention is the policy of holding individuals suspected of visa violations, illegal entry or unauthorized arrival, as well as those subject to deportation and removal until a decision is made by immigration authorities to grant a visa and release them into the community, or to repatriate them to their country of departure. Mandatory detention refers to the practice of compulsorily detaining or imprisoning people who are considered to be illegal immigrants or unauthorized arrivals into a country. Some countries have set a maximum period of detention, while others permit indefinite detention.
Cambridge City Airport, previously Marshall Airport Cambridge UK, is a regional airport in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the eastern outskirts of Cambridge, south of Newmarket Road and west of the village of Teversham, 1.5 NM from the centre of Cambridge and approximately 50 mi (80 km) from London.
Oakington is a small rural Anglo-Saxon village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Oakington and Westwick, in the South Cambridgeshire district, in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is seven miles (11 km) north-west of Cambridge. In 1961 the parish had a population of 698.
Somalis in the United Kingdom include British citizens and residents born in or with ancestors from Somalia. The United Kingdom (UK) is home to the largest Somali community in Europe, with an estimated 108,000 Somali-born immigrants residing in the UK in 2018 according to the Office for National Statistics. The majority of these live in England, with the largest number found in London. Smaller Somali communities exist in Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, Liverpool, Leicester, Milton Keynes, Sheffield and Cardiff.
Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre is a detention centre for foreign nationals prior to their deportation from the United Kingdom, one of 10 such centres currently in the UK. It is located near Milton Ernest in Bedfordshire, England, and is operated by Serco, which describes the place as "a fully contained residential centre housing adult women and adult family groups awaiting immigration clearance." Its population is, and has been, overwhelmingly female.
Northstowe is a new town in Cambridgeshire, England, forecast to have 24,400 residents in 10,000 homes. On 1 April 2021 Northstowe became a civil parish formed from Longstanton and Oakington and Westwick, with the first town council elected on 6 May of that year.
Longstanton is a village and civil parish in South Cambridgeshire, England, 6 miles (9.7 km) north-west of Cambridge city centre. Longstanton occupies 2,775 acres (1,123 ha). Longstanton was created in 1953 from the two parishes of Long Stanton All Saints and Long Stanton St Michael. While the village is called Longstanton, the alternative form Long Stanton is still in use, for example when referring to the separate pre-1953 parishes, or to the current ecclesiastical parish.
Royal Air Force Oakington or more simply RAF Oakington was a Royal Air Force station located 0.5 miles (0.80 km) north of Oakington, Cambridgeshire, England and 5.1 miles (8.2 km) northwest of Cambridge.
The Gateway Protection Programme was a refugee resettlement scheme operated by the Government of the United Kingdom in partnership with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and co-funded by the European Union (EU), offering a legal route for a quota of UNHCR-identified refugees to be resettled in the UK. Following a proposal by the British Home Secretary, David Blunkett, in October 2001, the legal basis was established by the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 and the programme itself launched in March 2004. The programme enjoyed broad support from the UK's main political parties.
Campsfield House was an immigration detention centre located in Kidlington near Oxford, England, operated by private prison firm Group 4 under contract with the British government. For 25 years, it was the site of a regular monthly protest from human rights campaigners and saw a number of internal protests, hunger strikes and two suicides. However, it was highly praised by the Chief Inspector of Prisons at the last full inspection in 2014. Campsfield closed in 2018.
It is difficult to measure how many people reside in the UK without authorisation, although a Home Office study based on Census 2001 data released in March 2005 estimated a population of between 310,000 and 570,000. The methods used to arrive at a figure are also much debated. Problems arise in particular from the very nature of the target population, which is hidden and mostly wants to remain so. The different definitions of 'illegality' adopted in the studies also pose a significant challenge to the comparability of the data. However, despite the methodological difficulties of estimating the number of people living in the UK without authorisation, the residual method has been widely adopted. This method subtracts the known number of authorised migrants from the total migrant population to arrive at a residual number which represents the de facto number of illegal migrants.
Unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in the United Kingdom, often abbreviated to UASC, are children who are outside their country of origin to seek asylum in the United Kingdom, are separated from parents and relatives, and are not in the care of someone who is responsible for doing so.
Although some means of controlling foreign visitors to the United Kingdom existed before 1905, modern immigration border controls as now understood originated then. Although an Alien Act was passed in 1793 and remained in force to some extent or other until 1836, there were no controls between then and 1905 barring a very loosely policed system of registration on entry.
Immigration detention in the United Kingdom is the practice of detaining foreign nationals for the purpose of immigration control. Unlike some other countries, UK provisions to detain are not outlined in a codified constitution. Instead, immigration enforcement holds individuals under Powers granted in the Immigration Act 1971 and by the Home Office Detention Centre Rules (2001). The expressed purpose of immigration detention is to "effect removal; initially to establish a person's identity or basis of claim; or [implement] where there is reason to believe that the person will fail to comply with any conditions attached to a grant of immigration bail." Detention can only lawfully be exercised under these provisions where there is a "realistic prospect of removal within a reasonable period".
