Asylum hotel protests latest: Government to appeal Epping court ruling as weekend of demonstrations looms

Security minister Dan Jarvis has said closing hotels housing asylum seekers must be done “in a managed and ordered way” as he unveiled Government plans to challenge the High Court’s decision related to the Bell Hotel in Epping.

He told broadcasters: “This 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.

“And that’s why we’ll appeal this decision.”

The Home Office will seek to appeal against the High Court’s refusal to allow it to intervene in the case of a hotel used to house asylum seekers in Epping, security minister Dan Jarvis said.

Anti-migrant protesters and counter-protesters gathered for weeks outside the Bell Hotel in Epping after news that a hotel resident tried to kiss a 14-year-old girl and was charged with sexual assault. The man has denied the accusation and is due to stand trial later this month.

Epping Forest District Council sought a temporary injunction to shut down the hotel because of “unprecedented levels of protest and disruption,” which had led to several arrests.

The High Court decision in favor of the council has the potential to spread elsewhere and government ministers are scrambling to work out what they can do if other councils manage to win similar rulings.

However, the Epping decision was based on planning laws, which may not apply elsewhere.

The latest Home Office figures show that there were 32,059 asylum seekers in UK hotels at the end of June, up eight per cent on the same point 12 months ago.

This is down slightly on the previous quarter, however, and far lower than the peak of 56,000 in September 2023. There are also now fewer than 210 hotels in use, down from 400 in summer 2023.

These hotels only make up around 35 per cent of all people in asylum accommodation, according to a report from the National Audit Office (NAO) in May.

But their cost is disproportionately expensive, making up 76 per cent of total government spending on asylum accommodation.

And, as has been seen in recent months, they are also a hot-bed for protests which have oftentimes turned violent.

Asked about the housing migrant crisis, Katie Lam said: “There is no good answer, there is nowhere satisfactory to put people who have come here illegally other than to detain them and deport them.”

Labour are now facing the prospect of several councils launching legal action against migrant hotels, which could see asylum seekers placed into HMO or military bases.

The shadow home office minister said this would come at an “eyewatering cost to the taxpayer” and said: “The only solution is to detain people when they arrive.”

She added: “It is difficult to do, this labour government has made it harder, they have scrapped the Rwanda plan for ideological reasons, I think they may have come to regret that as it was the only real deterrent.”

A council at the centre of a legal case to block a hotel from housing asylum seekers was among the top 10 UK local authorities which saw the biggest rise in numbers staying in this kind of accommodation in recent months.

Epping Forest District Council in Essex went from housing 28 asylum seekers in hotels in its area in March this year, to 199 by the end of June.

The latest data breakdown, published by the Home Office on Thursday, comes two days after the council secured a High Court temporary injunction blocking the use of Epping’s Bell Hotel as accommodation for asylum seekers on planning grounds.

The legal case followed protests and counter-protests outside the Bell Hotel.

There were 124 local authorities across the UK housing asylum seekers in hotels at the end of June, according to the Home Office data.

This is around a third of all UK authorities.

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An asylum seeker staying in the Bell Hotel in Epping has urged the government to “close all the hotels” and allow people to work.

Mohammed, from Somalia, told the BBC that he thought regular housing “would be better”.

He expressed the desire to support himself by working instead.

“So, if you cannot work and you don’t have enough socials [things to do]it is difficult,” he told the broadcaster.

“They are not allowed to work; they stay for long time.

“We don’t have guarantee [of becoming a] resident, so they get stress.

“The people, they go outside and they try to make problem.”