Tinsley House, located on the perimeter of Gatwick Airport, was established in May 1996. It has a capacity to hold 146 people at any one time and around 11,000 detainees currently go through the centre each year. In 2001, it became the first centre to hold families.
The private security firm Group 4 Securicor (G4S) is contracted by the immigration service to run Tinsley House. They manage the day-to-day running of the centre and, as such, do not have any say on who is detained or for how long they stay in detention.
In 1999, the Government introduced the Immigration and Asylum Act, which had significant consequences for immigration detention in the UK. From being a detention centre with a relatively stable population, Tinsley House was re-designated a ‘Removal Centre’.
Although the detainee population has become more transient, not everyone we visit is on their way out of the country. In fact only 49% of the people we visited in 2008 were directly removed from the country when they left Tinsley House.
Facts and Figures
In 2008, we assisted 780 detainees at Tinsley House.
73% were asylum seekers.
88% were male. 10% were children.
