The Bell Hotel's closure is not the end of the story
Thousands have demonstrated outside the Bell in recent weeks, sparked by the charging last month of an Ethiopian asylum seeker with three counts of sexual assault, one count of inciting a girl to engage in sexual activity and one count of harassment without violence. Hadush Kebatu, a resident of the Bell, had arrived in the UK by a small boat just eight days prior.
The hotel has been used to accommodate asylum seekers since 2020, when the doors of Britain's hotels were flung open to migrants during the pandemic. The Bell was slated for closure – to asylum claimants, at least – in 2024, but this decision was reversed by the new Labour government after it came to power last summer, in the teeth of bitter opposition from residents and councillors.
Overwhelmingly peaceful and local (albeit with some despicable flare-ups of bigotry and violence around the edges), the protests have single-handedly shifted the dial. With demonstrations now kicking off constantly, from Canary Wharf to Diss to Waterlooville, whenever ordinary people get so much as a whiff of a hotel or flat block being handed over to house asylum seekers, the Home Office is now in for one headache after another.
The truth is, this situation was always untenable. It is not to smear all of the people in those hotels to acknowledge that a non-negligible proportion of those who enter the country illegally will not be legitimate asylum seekers and may go on to commit other crimes. Our asylum system is now so dysfunctional it has essentially become a wrong 'uns' charter. Locals were never going to tolerate this.
With the wind in the protesters' backs, how will the government respond? The glare of public scrutiny is such that it can no longer get away with simply shuffling the problem around, bussing asylum seekers from one form of accommodation to another. This was never just about hotels anyway. This is about communities being forced to pay the price for successive governments losing control of the borders. Until that fundamental failure is corrected, the unrest is going nowhere.
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Daily Mirror
12 minutes ago
- Daily Mirror
Epping hotel controversy: 13 councils to jump on ruling to remove asylum seekers
A wave of local authorities are vowing to block asylum seekers being housed in hotels after Epping Forest District council won a shock victory in the High Court following weeks of protests Nigel Farage has claimed that all councils controlled by Reform UK will "do everything in their power" to block asylum hotels being set up in their areas after yesterday's controversial Epping ruling. Ministers are bracing for further legal challenges from councils across the country after the Essex local authority won a High Court injunction to evict asylum seekers from the Bell Hotel. The Home Office had warned the judge that an injunction could "interfere" with its legal obligations, while lawyers representing the hotel's owner argued it would set a dangerous "precedent", leaving authorities with few options for providing emergency accommodation for migrants. The shock ruling followed weeks of at-times violent protests outside the hotel, after a man from Afghanistan was charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl. Now, the Reform UK leader has vowed his party would seek to block any hotels being used for asylum processing in the council areas it currently controls - and a Tory council has already pledged to follow Epping Forest council's lead. Which councils are planning to block asylum seekers? The following Tory and Reform councils and mayoral areas have indicated that they are going to take action over asylum seekers staying in local accommodation: Broxbourne Derbyshire Doncaster Durham Greater Lincolnshire (mayoralty) Hull & East Yorkshire (mayoralty) Kent Lancashire Lincolnshire North Northamptonshire Nottinghamshire Staffordshire West Northamptonshire What has Nigel Farage said? In a column for the Telegraph this morning, the Reform UK leader urged people to hold "peaceful protests outside the migrant hotels" and "put pressure on local councils to go to court to try and get the illegal immigrants out". He added: "I can say today that the English local councils controlled by the party I lead, Reform UK, will be doing everything in their power to follow Epping's lead." What will the government do? Number 10 has already announced plans to move asylum seekers from hotels into houses of multiple occupancy into other forms of accommodation by the end of this parliament - but the new ruling is likely to give the Home Office a headache as to what to do in the meantime. Security minister Dan Jarvis told Times Radio today: "We're looking at a range of different contingency options following from a legal ruling that took place yesterday, and we'll look closely at what we're able to do." Epping Forest council had successfully argued that the use of the Bell Hotel for asylum seekers was not a permitted use of the hotel for planning purposes. Asked whether other migrant hotels have the proper planning permission, Mr Jarvis said: "Well, we'll see over the next few days and weeks. Other local authorities will be considering whether they wish to act in the same way that Epping (Forest) District Council have."I think the important point to make is that nobody really thinks that hotels are a sustainable location to accommodate asylum seekers. That's precisely why the Government has made a commitment that, by the end of this Parliament, we would have phased out the use of them."
The Independent
13 minutes ago
- The Independent
How many asylum seekers are in UK hotels and why are they being housed there?
The subject of asylum seekers being housed in hotels has come into sharp focus after a High Court ruling. On Tuesday, Epping Forest District Council was granted a temporary injunction blocking asylum seekers from being housed at the Bell Hotel in the Essex town. Here, the PA news agency takes a look at the latest overall data. – How many asylum seekers are in hotels across the UK? The most recent Home Office data showed there were 32,345 asylum seekers being housed temporarily in UK hotels at the end of March. This was down 15% from the end of December, when the total was 38,079. New figures – published among the usual quarterly immigration data release – are expected on Thursday, showing numbers in hotels at the end of June. Figures for hotels published by the Home Office date back to December 2022 and showed numbers hit a peak at the end of September 2023 when there were 56,042 asylum seekers in hotels. – How many hotels are in use for asylum seekers? It is thought there were more than 400 asylum hotels open in summer 2023. Labour said this has since been reduced to fewer than 210. – Why are asylum seekers being housed in hotels? Asylum seekers and their families can be housed in temporary accommodation, known as contingency accommodation, if they are awaiting assessment of their claim or have had a claim approved and there is not enough longer-term accommodation available. The Home Office provides accommodation to asylum seekers who have no other way of supporting themselves on a 'no choice' basis, so they cannot choose where they live. When there is not enough housing, the Home Office can move people to accommodation such as hotels and large sites, like former military bases. In May, the National Audit Office said those temporarily living in hotels accounted for 35% of all people in asylum accommodation. – Is this likely to be a permanent arrangement? Labour has pledged to end the 'costly use of hotels to house asylum seekers in this Parliament' – which would be 2029, if not earlier. Campaigners and charities have long argued that hotels are not suitable environments to house asylum seekers. The Refugee Council said they 'cost the taxpayer billions, trap people in limbo and are flashpoints in communities' and urged the Government to 'partner with local councils to provide safe, cost-effective accommodation within communities'. – What is the Government saying since the legal ruling? Ministers are 'looking at a range of different contingency options' following Tuesday's ruling, according to security minister Dan Jarvis In the immediate aftermath of the judgment, border security minister Dame Angela Eagle repeated criticism of the previous Conservative government, saying Labour had 'inherited a broken asylum system'. She said the Government would 'continue working with local authorities and communities to address legitimate concerns' around asylum hotels. – What options does the Home Office have now? Last month, amid protests outside the Bell Hotel and more migrants crossing the Channel, an extra 400 spaces were being prepared to house male asylum seekers at RAF Wethersfield in Essex. The former military site, which has a usual capacity of 800 beds, is expected to house more adult men on a short-term basis. The Labour Government scrapped the large site of the Bibby Stockholm barge in Portland, Dorset, earlier this year, while Napier Barracks in Folkestone, Kent, is also due to end housing asylum seekers and be returned to the Ministry of Defence in September. – Why were there protests outside the Bell Hotel? The hotel in Epping has been at the centre of a series of protests in recent weeks after an asylum seeker who was staying there was charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl – something he has denied and he is due to stand trial later in August. After the High Court's ruling, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage wrote in the Telegraph calling for Epping protests to inspire further action wherever there are concerns about the 'threat posed by young undocumented males' living in hotels. But on Tuesday more than 100 women's organisations wrote to ministers warning that vital conversations about violence against women and girls are being 'hijacked by an anti-migrant agenda' that fuels divisions and harms survivors. The joint statement, including from Rape Crisis England & Wales and Refuge, said: 'We have been alarmed in recent weeks by an increase in unfounded claims made by people in power, and repeated in the media, that hold particular groups as primarily responsible for sexual violence. 'This not only undermines genuine concerns about women's safety, but also reinforces the damaging myth that the greatest risk of gender-based violence comes from strangers.'
The Independent
44 minutes ago
- The Independent
So, where will we put asylum seekers now courts have backed the ‘not in my backyarders'?
What is the message that comes from the High Court's decision to back Epping Council's petition to close the Bell Hotel, which has been used to accommodate people seeking asylum? It is not, as has been propagandised, that the Establishment judges – who it turns out are not 'enemies of the people' after all – listened with sympathy to the cries of the mums and nans demonstrating outside the hotel and begging for protection for their kids (after one of the people in the hotel was arrested and then charged with a sexual assault). The High Court didn't take a view on that. They granted an interim injunction requested by the local council to end the hotel's current usage with 14 days' notice on… planning grounds. Nothing much to do with human rights, community safety, crime levels, public concerns, Reform UK, or various politicians, propagandists, troublemakers, and digital activists (human or not) jumping on the cause. It was a breach of planning rules about purpose, the same as if someone had turned a shop into a restaurant. In a way, that makes the judgment a much more powerful affair than if it had been imposed by an official using some ambiguous, legally questionable authority. If it's wrong for a hotel in Essex to be used in this way, then it's wrong for a hotel anywhere in the country to be put to such a use. There are 'acute' difficulties with this, as the Home Office warned. Where to put them? The unintended consequence of the ruling is that the High Court has inadvertently created, to borrow a politically fashionable expression, a 'two-tier' system. Councils that proactively pursue legal action can have so-called migrant hotels in their area closed down. Less activist and arguably more humane councils in other places may not choose to take up the opportunity. Maybe individuals or groups can, in any case. But that means that the migrants can be effectively 'deported' from one county to another by the Home Office. Or, alternatively, they end up in flats or houses of multiple occupation (HMO) in the original local authority, or elsewhere, and not in breach of the planning process. At any rate, where to house asylum seekers will soon become an even more chaotic and highly charged issue than it is now, especially if demonstrations start up in streets where there's an HMO, and the police will find it difficult to be in too many places at once. There will, in other words, be more trouble, and it will prove more difficult to contain it. That's not the High Court's problem, but it's everyone else's. There is, it's claimed, a simple answer to this: 'Deport!' If it were as simple as that, it would have been done long ago by politicians under intense political pressure. Quite apart from the inviolable right under international law to claim asylum – let's just say that's been abolished – these people still need to be processed, if only to determine where to send them. Some countries are dangerous; fine, say the advocates for immediate expulsion. But those countries, and safer ones, may not wish to take people back. We can't force another country to accept them, still less stop them trying to get back to Britain. Take them to international waters? A long way from the English Channel, and it wouldn't necessarily prevent them from making a return journey. Shall we 'tow them back to France, a safe country,' as is often the reply? Well, no, because that would be a violation of French sovereignty. Apart from the very small new returns arrangements, there is no lawful method of doing this. How, it might be asked, would we feel if the French navy brought them back to the south coast of England? Insane. It would risk confrontation with the French navy and a serious breach in relations with Paris and, thus, the EU. That would be bad for national security and for trade. Even Nigel Farage, history buff and atavistic patriot, might not wish for a return to a comic opera version of the Napoleonic Wars. Put them in tents? OK – but where? Place them in detention camps? Fine – but where? 'Not in my back yard' is the usual answer, which doesn't sound like a workable solution at scale. The challenge of irregular migration is very obviously an intractable one, to which there are no easy answers, and which has been made quite a bit more difficult by the High Court judges. Even so, they are doing their job, and an independent judiciary free of political pressure and media bullying is an essential part of our way of life. It should not matter to any court that Yvette Cooper is troubled by it, nor, for that matter, that some overheated pundit on Talk TV has got the champagne out. We should respect court decisions that are awkward or offensive. We should also spare a thought for the future of other human beings genuinely fleeing torture or execution, as some undoubtedly are, with no desire to break the law or attack anyone. It's unfashionable to say such things right now, but even if they are 'just' economic migrants, their lives matter too.
