An official recognition of architectural merit and historic significance have combined to proffer a glimmer of hope to many who want to stop one of the Royal Air Force’s most famous stations – now closed – becoming a compound for asylum seekers in rural Lincolnshire.

The Officers Mess at RAF Scampton has been accepted as a Grade II listed building, which means that it, at least, must be preserved.

RAF Scampton was home to No 617 Squadron, famous for the highly risky but successful May 1943 Dambusters raid, night-flying at ultra-low-level deep into industrial Germany. More recently the base – and the Mess – were home to the RAF’s Red Arrows aerobatic team.

The Mess itself is a classically simple Edwin Lutyens design, a template repeated at stations all over the country during the expansion of the RAF in the 1930s. There are many others similar to it. The thing that has motivated the local council’s listing of the building is an appreciation of what happened there.

RAF Scampton Officers Mess, now fenced and boarded up.

In World War 2 Lincolnshire, its low fens wide and flat – perfect for aerodrome construction – was facing Germany across the cold North Sea. This predominantly agricultural county had one of the densest populations of RAF stations anywhere in the nation, so it would be fair to say that the RAF itself is part of its heritage.

Politics muddies these waters, of course. The local council does indeed want RAF Scampton to be given a more “appropriate” use, and has been granted a legal injunction to halt work on the process of converting buildings for asylum-seeker accommodation. Many would prefer to see at least part of the base become a national RAF heritage centre.

Meanwhile the Westminster government, struggling with an embarrassing backlog of asylum seekers to process, needs cheap accommodation for them, and the local press, who know a good story when they see one, cite evidence that the government is ignoring the legal injunction and work is continuing on the base.

RAF Scampton Officers Mess is the building in which 617 Sqn’s commander, Wg Cdr Guy Gibson VC DSO* DFC, and his colleagues slept, ate and drank, celebrated and commiserated. Many took off from Scampton’s runways into Lincolnshire’s huge skies. Far fewer returned to land. From the 19 Avro Lancasters on the Dambusters mission, eight did not return, 53 crew were killed and three taken prisoner.

Grade II listed status does not prevent a building being used for other purposes, but it lays on the owner a duty to preserve its fabric and respect its historic purpose. It would make a difference if the government at Westminster provided some indication that it cares one way or another, but there isn’t any such evidence right now.

It will be interesting to see, at a time when the incumbent Conservative government is casting around desperately for disappearing votes, whether it heeds local sentiment, or hardens its planned cheap accommodation objective. The official opposition party, the Labour Party, is on the Scampton political bandwagon, promising a reversal of the Conservative decision if it wins power next year, even if the base is, by then, housing asylum seekers.