Asylum seekers can stay at a protest-hit hotel in Epping after a High Court judge denied the local council an injunction to block migrants being housed there.
Epping Forest District Council took legal action against Somani Hotels, which owns The Bell Hotel in Essex, claiming that they were breaching planning rules by housing asylum seekers at the site.
The hotel became the site of a series of protests over the summer after a migrant staying there, Hadush Kebatu, sexually assaulted a woman and a 14-year-old girl.
The local council tried to ban migrants from being housed at the hotel, telling the High Court that it had become “a feeding ground for unrest and protest”.
The council was initially granted a temporary injunction, which would have stopped 138 asylum seekers from being housed at the hotel beyond 12 September. The decision threatened to throw the government’s asylum policy into chaos after more councils said they would try and seek similar vetoes.
However the injunction was then overturned by the Court of Appeal, which found the decision to be “seriously flawed in principle”.
High Court judge Mr Justice Mould has now ruled that asylum seekers should be able to stay at the hotel, saying that it is for the police to manage any safety concerns in the local area.
In a judgement handed down on Tuesday, Mr Justice Mould said that the use of the hotel to house asylum seekers was not a flagrant breach of planning control. He added that he had heard “no evidence” to support concerns that the use of The Bell to house asylum seekers was placing the local GP, health, social or community services under pressure.
Mr Justice Mould continued: “There is no evidential basis at all for the assertion that asylum seekers as a cohort have a greater propensity than the settled population to engage in criminal or anti-social behaviour”.
He said that there is a clear “continuing need to source contingency accommodation for asylum seekers from hotels”, and concluded that the “planning and environmental harm resulting from the current use of The Bell is limited”.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said that the decision was “a dark day for local democracy and a slap in the face to the people of Epping”. He claimed: “A Labour government has once again used the courts to put the rights of illegal immigrants above the rights of British citizens”.
The Home Office intervened in the case to argue that asylum seekers should be allowed to stay in the hotel, telling the court that granting an injunction to Epping “essentially incentivises” other councils who wish to close down migrant hotels in their areas to seek legal action.
Officials argued that “the available asylum estate is subject to incredibly high levels of demand”. Becca Jones, director of asylum support, said the loss of the bed spaces in The Bell Hotel would be “significant” amid rising small boat crossings.
She said that the Home Office would “face considerable difficulties in re-accommodating them [asylum seekers] appropriately”.
The Essex hotel became a focal point of protests in the summer after an Ethopian national Hadush Kebatu was charged with sexually assaulting a teenage girl. He was jailed for 12 months in September and was later mistakenly released from prison and re-detained.
A second asylum seeker who was resident at the hotel, Syrian national Mohammed Sharwarq, was also jailed for 16 weeks in September after admitting assaulting two fellow residents and two members of staff at the site.
A third resident was arrested in April for the alleged offence of arson. In his judgement on Tuesday, Mr Justice Mould said the planning harm resulting from these actions or alleged actions “should not be overstated”, adding: “It has not been established that those fears and concerns properly relate to and are grounded in the use of The Bell as contingency accommodation for asylum seekers, rather than being the understandable reaction of local residents to the well-publicised criminal behaviour, actual and alleged, of three individuals who happen to be accommodated there”.
Responding to the ruling, Enver Solomon, chief executive at the charity Refugee Council, urged the government to ensure that all asylum hotels are closed next year. He added: “Plans to warehouse people in military barracks or other large sites are not a viable or humane solution. They are unsuitable, isolating, and the government’s own spending watchdog has found them to be more expensive than hotels.”
Steve Smith, CEO of charity Care4Calais, said that residents of The Bell “have been subjected to racist abuse, and threats of physical violence”, adding: “Now we have today’s judgement, we call on the Home Office to get on and process the claims of all those who have been left behind at The Bell.”
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