Security firm Group 4 has yet to make a decision on whether it will make a bid to run the proposed new Bicester asylum centre.

Organiser Bill MacKeith, front, with other Campsfield protesters

The company, which runs Campsfield House detention centre, near Kidlington, was targeted by demonstrators at the weekend, who claimed the company could make a bid to run the new centre, planned for former Ministry of Defence land between the villages of Arncott and Piddington.

A spokesman for Group 4 Total Security said: "The Home Office has only just announced it is going ahead with the centre outside Bicester, and we are not in a position to say whether or not we will be submitting a bid to run it."

Members of the Campaign to Close Campsfield gathered at the gates of Campsfield House on Saturday, August 30. The demonstration followed the recent trial of detainees at the Yarl's Wood detention centre near Bedford, which Group 4 ran.

Part of the £100m centre was destroyed in an arson attack.

Only four of the 12 detainees originally charged in connection with the disturbance in February last year were convicted, none in relation to the arson.