Residents of an Oxfordshire village have voted to become independent from the UK in a symbolic referendum held in protest at plans to house more than 1,000 migrants at a former military base.
Villagers in Piddington, near Bicester, voted on Tuesday over Home Office proposals to house up to 1,256 male asylum seekers at nearby MoD Bicester.
The referendum was organised by the parish council and out of 312 votes cast, 285 voted to leave, 26 voted no, and one ballot paper was spoiled.
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy told BBC Breakfast the government would not reconsider the migrant housing proposal.
Piddington’s 350 residents were invited to cast their ballot in a small box outside the village hall.
Delivering the result, parish council vice chair Susannah Parden said: “We are Piddington the village that roars.”
Parish council chair Tim McNally added: “This is 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.”
Prime Minister Andy Burnham said he understood the village’s “strength of feeling” but there needed to be fairness across the country.
“The only thing to do is to get the numbers down, the number of crossings down,” he said. “And they are significantly down. They are now at a seven-year low.
“We also made a commitment to people to end the use of hotels to house refugees and asylum seekers, and that commitment needs to be honoured, and I think the vast majority of people say ‘yeah, that really does need to proceed’.
“So this involves difficult difficult decisions. It’s about fairness across the country. I’m not saying that only one part of the country or one group of communities should do all of the work.”
Nandy said that reconsidering the MoD Bicester plan would not be fair.
“The alternative would be to ask communities who have already seen their local community quadruple in size to take more of the load – and I think that’s deeply unfair,” she said.
Nandy said Piddington was “not actually” unusual, adding: “In my constituency there are particular streets where that has happened to the community.”
But she said the government was listening to the Piddington campaigners.
“I do really understand that when changes are made that affect your community it can be very distressing.
“We inherited an enormous asylum backlog, we are processing claims much more quickly, we are removing people who don’t have the right to be here.
“Small boat crossings fell this summer for the first time in many years because of the action we have taken.
“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.”