Picture this. You're pottering about in a sleepy Oxfordshire village of 370 souls, kids playing near the reserve, the old military site next door doing what redundant military sites do: nothing much. Then one day the Home Office announces it's turning the place into a hostel for 1,250 men aged 18 to 65, fresh off the asylum merry-go-round, for the next decade at least. Sign in, sign out, first lot arriving by the end of the year. No chat, no proper impact assessment, just get on with it.
So the good people of Piddington did what any self-respecting community might when ignored once too often. On 4 July they held a ballot. Turnout was almost two-thirds of the village. Of the 180 or so adults who showed up, 175 voted yes to pursuing a referendum on independence from the United Kingdom. Ninety-six percent. They want to become the Principality of Piddington. You don't organise that sort of turnout in rural Britain unless something has properly got under your skin.
The site itself is a former Ministry of Defence storage facility right up against the village, next to a children's play area. It was never built for housing. The plan is part of the wider scramble to empty the asylum hotels, converting old military bits and bobs instead. Provisional numbers suggested around 270 could be in by the end of 2026, but the capacity floated is far higher. Utility connections are already being prepped, with works eyed for late August or early September. All without any full public proposal or assessment, according to an investigation by Modernity News.
Resident Ian Darby put it plainly: no one had come to talk to the village about the asylum housing plans.
That absence of basic courtesy seems to be what tipped it. People aren't daft. They can see what rapid demographic change on that scale does to a place the size of Piddington. Concerns about security, the safety of women and children, pressure on services, the lot. When central government treats a village like a blank canvas for national policy, locals start wondering whose country this actually is.
Tim McNally, chair of Piddington Parish Council, called the result incredible. Almost two-thirds of the village had their say, the rest being children, and 96 percent backed it. He described it as self-determination in response to being ignored. The village, he said, would now form a council and representatives to empower itself. On 19 July he took to X to post an open letter to the incoming Prime Minister. The letter sets out the village's mandate and requests dialogue. It is on its way and will be published.
