Council’s bid to block asylum seekers being housed in Bell Hotel to be heard

A council’s bid to block the use of an Essex hotel as accommodation for asylum seekers is to be heard at the High Court on Wednesday.

Epping Forest District Council (EFDC) is taking legal action against Somani Hotels over the use of the Bell Hotel in Epping, with the Home Office intervening in the case.

A High Court judge granted the council a temporary injunction earlier this year that would have stopped 138 asylum seekers from being housed there beyond September 12.

But this was overturned by the Court of Appeal in August, which found the decision to be “seriously flawed in principle”.

The authority’s bid for a permanent injunction is now due to be heard across three days at the Royal Courts of Justice in London. The hearing before Mr Justice Mould will begin at 10.30am on Wednesday.

Somani Hotels and the Home Office are opposing the claim.

The Bell became the focal point of several protests and counter-protests in the summer after an asylum seeker housed there was charged with sexually assaulting a teenage girl in Epping in July.

Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, an Ethiopian national who arrived in the UK on a small boat days before the incident, was jailed for 12 months in September.

A second asylum seeker who was a resident at the hotel, Syrian national Mohammed Sharwarq, was also jailed for 16 weeks last month after admitting assaulting two fellow residents and two members of staff at the site.

Several others were also charged with offences related to demonstrations outside the hotel.

EFDC issued legal proceedings against Somani Hotels in August over an alleged breach of planning rules, which its barristers told the High Court was causing a “very serious problem” which “could not be much worse”.

Mr Justice Eyre granted the council a temporary injunction on August 19, but Somani Hotels and the Home Office both successfully challenged the ruling at the Court of Appeal.

Following the Court of Appeal’s judgment, Home Office minister Dame Angela Eagle said the Government was committed to closing all asylum hotels by the end of this Parliament.

But she added that it appealed against the High Court ruling so that hotel use can be ended in a “controlled and orderly way”.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer also said that he “completely” gets people’s concerns about migration, adding: “When it comes to the asylum hotels, I want them emptied.”

But Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said after the ruling that Sir Keir “puts the rights of illegal immigrants above the rights of British people”.

She also urged Tory councils to proceed with legal action over the use of hotels as accommodation for asylum seekers in their areas.

In September, the Home Office lost a bid to delay Wednesday’s hearing by six weeks, as its barristers said there should be a “period of reflection” after the Court of Appeal’s ruling.

Mr Justice Eyre dismissed the bid, saying: “It is in the interests of all that the matters affecting the Bell Hotel are resolved in a reasonably expeditious way.”