The children of a quiet Oxfordshire village have been forced to put pen to paper and plead with the Prime Minister himself. Their message is simple and heartbreaking: leave our home alone.
Piddington is a tiny English settlement of roughly 350 people—around 250 adults and just 46 children. The Home Office and Labour government under Andy Burnham intend to place 1,250 single adult male asylum seekers on a former Ministry of Defence site that borders the village, runs along the back of homes, and sits directly against the parish playing field and children’s park.
If the plan proceeds, the number of young men dumped on their doorstep will dwarf the entire local population.
Residents previously held a symbolic independence vote after the government announced the scheme with zero meaningful consultation. Weeks later the silence from Downing Street continues, so the children themselves have now spoken.
Seven-year-old Rex Perkin wrote: “Dear Andy, We like our village because I and my family walk down to my sister’s grave to see her. I worry I won’t be able to do that anymore. My family has lived here for over 100 years. I love the playing field in Piddington because I go there every week. Thanks Andy.”
Eleven-year-old Tilly West pleaded: “Please, please, please! This is for the 300-400 people in the village as well as dogs who won’t be able to go sniffing in the bushes as much.”
Nine-year-old Orla West was direct: “I do not like this idea because we love our park. We can walk our dogs. We love Piddington.”
Other children echoed the same theme—freedom to play, walk the dog, cycle, and simply be children in the only home they have ever known. Their letters were delivered as adults in the village continue to face a wall of non-response from the government.
Parish Council chair Tim McNally has documented the official silence. Fourteen days after an open letter to Burnham, there was still no engagement. “Families are anxious. Questions are growing. And trust is being tested,” he said. “This is bigger than one village. It’s about whether communities like ours still matter when decisions are made.”
The village has opened a fundraising effort and is weighing further democratic steps, including a referendum on self-determination.
Residents describe a place with deep roots and generations of the same families. One mother whose children wrote letters told reporters the scale would leave them “so outnumbered that it would change our lives completely.”
Another parent noted that even the ability of an elderly grandmother to walk home safely at night is now in question.
The site itself is a long-abandoned munitions area requiring major infrastructure work, yet the government presses ahead with plans for an open facility where men aged 18-65 can sign in and out at will for a minimum of ten years.
McNally has framed the fight as one that now represents more than Piddington. On TalkTV he made clear he feels he is speaking for the country as well as his neighbours.
Conservative MP Joy Morrissey addressed the fears of locals, noting “These mothers don’t want their daughters to [be] raped or molested.”
The official response remains the familiar boilerplate. Number 10 says community concerns are “central” to its reforms, points to a drop in hotel numbers, and claims it will “consider” the children’s letters.
That is little comfort to a village that has already watched its local voice sidelined, its planning powers stripped from the district council, and its future decided in Whitehall.
Piddington’s children are not asking for special treatment. They are asking to keep the ordinary freedoms that previous generations took for granted—walking their pets, playing on the field, growing up without being outnumbered by a sudden influx of foreign fighting-age men whose presence was never put to a democratic vote.
In a country that still claims to value local communities and the safety of its own children, those letters should be impossible to ignore. The government has so far chosen silence.
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