It’s the issue that has dominated the week: hotels housing asylum seekers. On Tuesday, the High Court granted a temporary injunction to Epping Forest district council, meaning that the asylum seekers living in Essex’s Bell Hotel will have to be removed within 24 days. The landmark ruling has prompted councils across the country to consider taking similar legal action – but now it transpires that the Home Office is seeking to intervene in the decision. Good heavens…
The action will not seek to appeal the entire judgment but, security minister Dan Jarvis told broadcasters on Friday, the government is seeking to challenge the High Court’s decision on the Bell Hotel, so that Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is allowed to intervene. He added:
The government will close all asylum hotels and we will clear up the mess that we inherited from the previous government. We’ve made a commitment that we will close all of the asylum hotels by the end of this parliament but we need to do that in a managed and ordered way.
It’s not quite clear yet however what this means for this week’s judgment…
In a further statement, Cooper said:
We agree with communities across the country that all asylum hotels need to close, including the Bell Hotel, and we are working to do so as swiftly as possible as part of an orderly, planned and sustained programme that avoids simply creating problems for other areas or local councils as a result of piecemeal court decisions or a return to the kind of chaos which led to so many hotels being opened in the first place. That is the reason for the Home Office appeal in this case, to ensure that going forward, the closure of all hotels can be done in a properly managed way right across the country without creating problems for other areas and local councils.
The legal action came after a series of protestors gathered outside the venue after a resident was charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl. claimed that Somani Hotels had breached planning rules, given the site is not being used for its intended purpose. The barristers argued that the situation ‘could not be much worse’, with Philip Coppel KC adding: ‘There has been what can be described as an increase in community tension, the catalyst of which has been the use of the Bell Hotel to place asylum seekers’. Lawyers for the hotel fumed an injunction would be a ‘draconian’ move, while the Home Office tried to intervene at the last minute, with its lawyers insisting the injunction ‘runs the risk of acting as an impetus for further violent protests.’ The council’s barristers won on a planning technicality, after a judge concluded the Bell Hotel was not being used for its designated purpose: to house hotel guests.
The ruling set a significant precedent, and now a number of councils across the country are considering taking similar legal action – including nine Labour-controlled councils. Migrant hotels have decreased under Labour – and more people blame the previous Tory government for asylum seeker hotels – however Home Office stats on Thursday revealed that in Keir Starmer’s first year there had been 111,000 asylum claims made. Meanwhile newspapers are filled with reports of weekend protests in a number of council areas, while Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice has backed Britons protesting outside other migrant hotels. He added that the 12 councils across Britain in which Reform is the largest party will also push for similar action. But will the government pushback change any of this? Stay tuned…
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