THE Home Office is facing a legal challenge this week over claims that vulnerable women held at a new detention centre in County Durham have been denied in-person legal advice. 

The case, which starts today in the High Court, has been brought by a detainee who struggled to access legal advice while being held at Derwentside immigration removal centre near Consett and the charity Women for Refugee Women. 

The charity says that women at the centre are only able to access legal advice over the phone or by video call due to a shortage of providers of immigration legal aid operating in the north-east of England.

The Home Office opened the women-only detention centre last year despite promising to reduce the number of women in detention. 

The charity is arguing that the lack of in-person solicitors makes it harder for survivors of sexual and gender-based violence to disclose their trauma, resulting in asylum and trafficking claims not being identified, wrongful refusals and deportations.

Shalini Patel, a public law solicitor at Duncan Lewis, which is representing the charity, said that government policy recognises this, yet it opened up a women’s detention centre “in the knowledge that its location would severely restrict the detainees’ fundamental right to access of justice.” 

Jane, a survivor of gender-based violence, who was locked up at Derwentside for a month, said she was unable to tell a solicitor over the phone about her experiences. 

“The clock was ticking, getting closer to my removal date, and I felt I was losing my mind,” she said. 

The asylum-seeker was eventually freed after Women for Refugee Women found her a solicitor.

“The Home Office has caused me so much unnecessary pain,” she said. “I don’t want any other women to go through what I went through.”

The case will be heard over two days.