What High Court hotel ruling means for migrants across Britain
But the ruling could have a wider impact on migrant hotels across the country.
Q: Will all migrant hotels in Britain now close?
A: No – the interim injunction only applies to the Bell Hotel in Epping. Other hotels with contracts to house asylum seekers will be able to continue to do so. However, Epping Forest district council's victory could prompt other local authorities to submit similar legal applications.
Q: Why are so many migrants being housed in hotels?
A: In recent years, there has been an increase in the use of 'contingency' asylum accommodation because of the limited availability of private dwellings and hostels. In most cases, this consists of hotel rooms, procured through government contracts for the use of asylum seekers. A backlog of asylum cases and rising numbers of Channel migrant crossings have contributed to large numbers of asylum seekers being housed in hotel accommodation over the past five years.
Q: What is Yvette Cooper's statutory duty to asylum seekers on accommodation?
A: The Home Secretary is required to provide accommodation and subsistence support to all destitute asylum seekers whilst their claims are being decided. These legal obligations are set out under the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. Support under section 95 of the Act is provided for people waiting for a decision on their asylum claim or appeal. Section 98 support is provided while a person's eligibility for section 95 asylum support is being considered.
Q: What will the Government do next?
A: Lawyers representing Ms Cooper made a last-minute legal application to intervene in the case ahead of the judgment. However, Mr Justice Eyre rejected the application. Angela Eagle, the border security minister, said the Government would 'carefully consider this judgment', adding: 'As this matter remains subject to ongoing legal proceedings it would be inappropriate to comment further at this stage.' However, lawyers for the Home Office confirmed that they would seek to appeal against the injunction.
Q: How many migrants are in the Bell Hotel?
A: The Bell Hotel has 80 rooms and can currently accommodate up to 138 asylum seekers. Following a hearing on Friday, Mr Justice Eyre ordered Somani Hotels Ltd to stop housing any new migrant residents while the judgment was pending.
Q: What crimes are alleged to have been committed by Bell Hotel migrants?
A: Three residents are currently facing criminal charges. Hadush Gerbeslaisie Kebatu, 41, was arrested after allegedly sexually assaulting a schoolgirl on July 7, days after arriving in Britain. The Ethiopian denied all wrongdoing when he was charged and appeared at Chelmsford magistrates' court on July 17. Kebatu's arrest prompted a series of protests at the hotel.
However, Mr Justice Eyre's judgment on the hotel also referenced the arrest of two other residents. Last month, Rawand Abdulrih, 36, was charged with arson with intent to endanger life over an incident that took place at the hotel on April 5. Abdulrih was also charged with the same offence in relation to a separate fire at the Phoenix Hotel, another migrant hotel nearby, on March 28. Mohammed Sharwarq, 32, another resident of the Bell Hotel, is accused of kissing a man on the neck on July 25. In court last week, he denied a charge of sexually assaulting a man aged over 16 by touching him in a sexual way without consent.
Q: What legal argument did the council use to secure the interim injunction?
A: Epping Forest district council largely hung its argument on planning laws and the fact that Somani Hotels had not obtained permission to change the use of the hotel to an accommodation for asylum seekers.
Q: Is it a permanent injunction?
A: It is an interim injunction, which means it is not permanent but granted temporarily ahead of a full hearing, which is set to take place in the autumn. Lawyers for the hotel firm and the Home Secretary confirmed in court that they intended to appeal against the injunction. If appeals are submitted quickly, the Court of Appeal may decide to grant the residents a further stay before they are evicted.
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The Guardian
7 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Labour-run councils consider legal challenges to close asylum hotels
Labour-run councils are considering legal challenges to close hotels housing asylum seekers after a landmark ruling prompted officials to consider increasing the use of former military sites as emergency accommodation. Wirral and Tamworth councils said they are exploring high court injunctions to remove claimants after the Conservative-run authority in Epping Forest won a temporary high court injunction to remove people from the Bell Hotel. The developments come after the Home Office minister Dan Jarvis said the government is looking at alternative options if there is a flurry of successful challenges from councils. Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, is determinedto stick to her plan after the Epping ruling and its consequences, a source said. 'We have a plan and we're sticking to it to close asylum hotels by the end of the parliament. This is one narrow court judgment that happened yesterday. We're not being knocked off course, this is our manifesto commitment,' the source said. Ministers are reluctant to disclose the details about alternatives to asylum hotels because of concerns that it could be used as a recruitment tool for the far right, a government source said. Cllr Paula Basnett, the leader of Wirral council whose boundaries include the Wallasey constituency of the immigration minister Angela Eagle, said the council is actively considering 'all options' to close a local hotel. She added: 'Like many other local authorities, we have concerns about the Home Office's practice of placing asylum seekers in hotels without consultation or regard to local planning requirements. 'We are actively considering all options available to us to ensure that any use of hotels or other premises in Wirral is lawful and does not ride roughshod over planning regulations or the wishes of our communities. 'Wirral has always been proud of its record in supporting families and those fleeing conflict, but it is unacceptable for the government to impose unsuitable, short-term arrangements that disrupt communities and bypass local decision-making. 'If necessary, we will not hesitate to challenge such decisions in order to protect both residents and those seeking refuge.' Labour councillor Carol Dean, leader of Tamworth borough council, said they had explored similar legal avenues in 2022 when the Home Office first started using a local hotel, but did not end up pursuing them. 'The situation at Epping Forest represents a potentially important legal precedent, and we are carefully assessing what this might mean for our circumstances here in Tamworth. 'We fully recognise the UK government has a statutory duty to accommodate people seeking asylum. However, we have consistently maintained that the prolonged use of hotel accommodation may not represent the best approach,' she added. Conservative-run Broxbourne Council in Hertfordshire has said it was taking legal advice 'as a matter of urgency', while Tory-run East Lindsey district council in Lincolnshire said officers are investigating and 'will take appropriate action'. Reform UK-led councils, West Northamptonshire council and Staffordshire county council, also said the authorities would look at the options available after the high court ruling. On Tuesday, Reform UK leaders Nigel Farage and Richard Tice indicated that councils run by the party will consider their own legal challenges. However, a number of these do not have responsibility for planning permission, which may limit their ability to launch legal bids. Other authorities have ruled out legal action, with the leader of Labour-run Newcastle city council saying she was 'confident' the council could end the use of hotels without going to court. Karen Kilgour said: 'We recognise that people seeking asylum include families, women, and children, many of whom have faced unimaginable trauma. 'Newcastle has a proud history of offering sanctuary, and we stand ready to play our part – but it must be done in a way that works for our city and supports the dignity and wellbeing of those who come here.' Mr Justice Eyre granted the Epping injunction after hearing the local council's complaints that planning law had been breached in changing the site's use. Epping district council also cited disruption caused by the protests and concerns for the safety of the asylum seekers themselves. The hotel has been at the centre of violent far-right protests since an asylum seeker was charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl. Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu has denied charges against him and is due to stand trial later this month. Since 2020, there has been greater reliance on hotels to house asylum seekers, with 32,345 being housed temporarily in England and Wales at the end of March this year. Labour has promised to end the use of hotels to house asylum seekers by 2029 by cutting small boat crossings and building new accommodation. Asked on Times Radio about possible housing options for anyone removed from hotels, Jarvis said on Wednesday that the government is 'looking at a range of different contingency options'. These are understood to include placing people removed from hotels in Wethersfield Air Base in Essex and Napier Barracks in Kent. Figures from the end of March show that almost a third of asylum seekers that receive government support were housed in 'contingency accommodation' which is flats and houses. The statistics, from the National Audit Office (NAO) and other official sources, says this amounts to about 32, 300 people, a reduction of 42% compared with its 2023 peak. But the current government and its predecessors have also been forced to use disused military bases to house refugees, with the two most high-profile being Wethersfield Air Base in Essex and Napier Barracks in Kent. Despite ministers coming under heavy criticism for the conditions refugees have been forced to endure, this Labour government is set to expand the use of both bases. It comes after the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, pledged to stop using taxpayer-funded hotels by 2029 in her Spending Review, in a drive to save £1bn. The Home Office aims to achieve this by moving refugees into cheaper sites. In April of last year, Cooper said Wethersfield is neither 'a sustainable solution' nor provides 'value for money for the taxpayer'. But an internal Home Office memo dated 24 July, seen by the Guardian, shows there are plans to put people in Wethersfield despite it being at maximum capacity. It states: 'While the site's regular cap is 800 an additional 445 bed spaces may be used temporarily during peak demand. There are no plans to exceed 1,245.' In March, the high court found the previous government's use of Wethersfield to be unlawful after three men likened their conditions to a prison. Napier Barracks, which was due to be handed back to the Ministry of Defence in September, will instead continue to house migrants into 2026.
Telegraph
7 minutes ago
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Sending British troops to Ukraine is a dangerous folly
Sir Keir Starmer has pledged to send British troops to Ukraine as part of a European 'reassurance force' if and when the guns finally fall silent. According to the Defence Secretary, the military is 'ready to go, they're ready to act from day one'. Yet the hollowed-out state of Britain's armed forces paints a different picture. Britain is unlikely to be able to deploy troops in significant numbers, and it is far from clear that they would survive – let alone fight and win – should things get messy. The priority of this year's Strategic Defence Review was to get the armed forces ready to fight a war against Russia. But that will take time. Putting boots on the ground in Ukraine could jeopardise this ambition, as well as weaken our commitment to Nato. There are three principal reasons for this. First, numbers. Politicians will likely want to get away with deploying a single battle-group (1,500 troops) alongside a lion's share of the command and control, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets and logistics enablers. However, if Britain wants to lead the mission and provide a credible deterrent to Russia that other European nations can plug into, then the minimum contribution for the UK would be a brigade (5,000). This commitment would require 15,000 troops to sustain indefinitely (one in theatre, one recovering and one training), which amounts to 20 per cent of the total British Army on paper strength, or 27 per cent when considering that only 77 per cent of the army's soldiers (54,695 troops) are currently considered medically deployable. Committing this force to an open-ended operation would effectively be permanently removing these troops from the British Army order of battle. This would come after committing two divisions (likely over 25,000 troops) to be Nato's Strategic Reserve. Britain could just about do this, but it could not do anything else. Second, capabilities. The 'reassurance force' will not be a neutral peacekeeping one. It will need to have access to the full heavy suite of military capabilities – on the land, sea and in the air and space – to deter further Russian attacks. In extremis, this force would need to fight and fix Russian forces within Ukraine if a wider war between Nato and Russia broke out, whether it be in Ukraine, or somewhere else in the Euro-Atlantic. The British Army is modernising, but it simply lacks the drones, tanks, armoured infantry and heavy artillery to provide a credible fighting force that would concern Moscow. The army also needs time to bring in equipment, train and integrate new doctrine for a battlefield that has been revolutionised by drone warfare. This 'reassurance force' would essentially be a few thousand European troops with old and outdated gear. Should fighting break out, it is more likely that the Ukrainian armed forces – the largest in Europe, battle-hardened and up to date with the latest innovations – would be doing the reassuring. Third, track record. British soldiers trained the Afghan National Security Forces for two decades, who were swept aside by the Taliban in a single summer offensive. Similarly, US and British-trained Iraqi Security Forces crumbled under the 2014 summer Isis advance. Most concerning, the 2011 Nato-led Operation Unified Protector over Libya limited the violence but did not produce a strategic victory. In short, Europeans have a poor track record of post-Cold War military success, even when the US has been heavily involved. These recent operations were all discretionary, whereas a mission to Ukraine cannot fail, otherwise it would be fatal for European military credibility and therefore broader European security. With reports that British troops might be sent to Ukraine within weeks of a ceasefire, there is not much time for defence planners to design an operation maximised for success. Furthermore, Putin could test the reassurance force early, in the hope of unsettling the Europeans and preventing further Nato members contributing to it in the future. For this reason the operation is incredibly risky. Without concrete US guarantees – not just to Ukraine but also European allies – a European-led deployment would be incredibly vulnerable and provide Putin with an opportunity, rather than a deterrent, to continue his aggression.
The Independent
36 minutes ago
- The Independent
Solving the asylum question is suddenly even more urgent
What next? As ministers digest the High Court ruling on the use of a hotel in Epping to house asylum seekers, they have very limited options in front of them, none of them good ones. The High Court should not be attacked for making a ruling that takes no account of politics or even practicalities, for that is not its job. It has, though, made a bad situation very much worse. It is hardly helpful to anyone, in such circumstances, for Nigel Farage to exploit a delicate and sometimes combustible situation by calling for more peaceful protests. From bitter experience, we know how such demonstrations can degenerate into minor disorder, or worse. In fact, given the force of the High Court judgment, there is even less need for such protests now. Instead, Mr Farage and his deputy, Richard Tice, as usual, are playing on the fears of people and behaving in a way that is irresponsible at best and dangerous at worst. Mr Farage's interventions in the riots last year only added to the campaign of disinformation underway, and most recently was made to apologise for claiming that the Essex police had 'bussed in' counter-demonstrators in Epping. The Conservatives, mesmerised by the rise of Reform UK, are in a constant losing battle to out-Farage Farage, and they should know better than to propagate myths about asylum seekers living in 'offensively luxurious' conditions, which was today's unhelpful sideswipe from former Tory MP Damian Green. The shadow home secretary Chris Philp and the shadow communities secretary James Cleverly should bear their share of the blame for the mess the asylum system is in, and offer some constructive alternatives and call for calm. They will not recover as a serious alternative party of government until they too come up with a plan for the asylum system. The leader of the opposition, Kemi Badenoch, often talks of such a thing, but it is yet to be seen. Meanwhile, her undeclared rival, Robert Jenrick, appears to be constantly dialling up tensions. The position is serious. Were the Bell Hotel the only place to be affected by the ruling, then it would not be such a challenge to relocate its 140 residents by the date set by the court of 12 September. However, the judgment also sets a clear precedent, albeit largely based in planning law, for the end of the use of hotels to provide emergency housing. It does so with near-immediate effect. That means some 32,000 individuals will need to be rehoused, at absurdly short notice. Already, local authorities controlled by Reform UK and the Conservatives are expected to bring their own cases, which, as the Home Office lawyers warned the High Court, will make the dilemma of finding shelter for them even more acute. In practice, too, it will encourage many more local protests and increase the pressure on police forces to maintain order. One other immediate effect will be to increase the pressure in areas where Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green councils may still try to stick to a 'refugees welcome' policy. This only creates a sense of unfairness that the task of finding shelter for the immigrants is not being properly shared across the country. And, in any case, all, including the refugees and other migrants affected, agree that using hotels is a far from ideal solution in any case. Contrary to some of the anti-refugee propaganda, these hotels, whatever their nominal star ratings, are unsuitable for long-term residence, and are not the lap of luxury. Concierge is not available. Asylum seekers are not allowed to work, they are given shelter and a minimal allowance to stave off destitution, some medical attention and, courtesy of some councils, access to some recreational activities. They are not cosseted in the way some seem to imagine. There is talk of the migrants being placed in flats, which would be relatively expensive, student accommodation, and houses of multiple occupation (HMOs). These create their own problems, particularly because the tendency will be for the irregular immigrants to be moved in disproportionate numbers to parts of the country where rentals are relatively low. The effect there will be to push rents up for the locals, and create more friction in host communities. It may also prompt more action by some local councils to frustrate the strategy, such as using their powers to block the conversion of houses across large areas into HMOs under Article 4 of the town and country planning acts. Even where HMO accommodation is found for families or smaller groups of asylum seekers, they will be more vulnerable to any aggressive demonstrations organised by neighbours alarmed by extremist misinformation about them. Such incidents will be much harder for the police to control. It may be that some form of emergency legislation will be required to delay the implementation of such High Court orders, although that in itself may not be constitutional. The only course then open to government is to redouble its efforts to process the backlog bequeathed to them by the previous administration, speeding up the grant of leave to remain for genuine refugees, or issuing deportation orders in expedited fashion for rejected claimants. It will take too long to build vast detention centres, while the old army barracks that have been commandeered in the past have been found to be completely unsuitable. The High Court has listened to the representatives of the people of Epping Forest and made its decision, and it is right that the judges should do so. Citizens have a right to have their cases heard impartially and have their grievances aired. The courts will no doubt soon be issuing many similar orders. Yet there are other people with a stake in these cases. Perhaps the most lamentable aspect of this latest episode in the migration crisis is that the voices of the immigrants themselves have been so rarely heard, and their plight disregarded. They have their human rights, too, enforceable by law – though many would cheerfully seek to deny them that. Indeed, the tendency in the media has been to demonise these fellow human beings as malevolent monsters determined to wreak crime and havoc in whatever neighbourhood they find themselves bussed to. Whether refugee or economic migrant, they are entitled to be treated properly in a civilised society, and not portrayed, as cynical politicians pretend, as an 'invasion' of 'fighting-age' men. They are not an alien army, but individuals who want a better life. Many would have preferred to stay put, were it not for war, persecution, famine and poverty. In a land such as Britain, with severe labour shortages, they have much to contribute, as have previous waves of immigrants. They could help to fix the 'Broken Britain' we hear so much about, and do the jobs that need doing. Yet they are all too often regarded as terrorists, rapists and murderers. The police at the hotel demos fare hardly any better, berated as 'paedo-defenders' and verbally and physically abused for doing their duty and preserving the King's Peace. The wider challenge for ministers now is to persuade the public that they are doing all they can to restore order to the asylum system – and to rebuild confidence in it. That task just got a lot more urgent.
