UK court rules asylum seekers can remain at hotel

LONDON

A High Court judge has ruled that asylum seekers can continue to be housed at the Bell Hotel in Essex, southeast England, dismissing a local council’s bid to stop the arrangement.

The Bell Hotel, located in the Epping Forest district, has been used to house asylum seekers under Home Office contracts since 2022.

The Epping Forest District Council (EFDC) had sought an injunction against the hotel’s owner, Somani Hotels, arguing that using the site to accommodate asylum seekers breached planning rules.

Sky News said lawyers for the council indicated that the use of the hotel represented a “material change of use” and had led to “increasingly regular protests” in the area.

But the Home Office intervened, calling the council’s application “misconceived.”

Justice Timothy Mould rejected the council’s claim on Tuesday, ruling that “it is not a case in which it is just and convenient for this court to grant an injunction.”

The judge said the council had failed to present any evidence to support its argument that asylum seekers posed a crime risk or anti-social behavior.

“I should need to see an evidence-based and clear and statistically sound analysis of the relative incidence of criminal and anti-social behaviour amongst asylum seekers, as a defined cohort of persons, in comparison to a properly defined cohort of the settled population,” he said. “There is no such evidence before the court.

“The fact that persons accommodated in asylum accommodation pursuant to sections 95 and 98 of the 1999 Act from time to time commit criminal offences or behave antisocially provides no reliable basis for asserting any particular propensity of asylum seekers to engage in criminal or anti-social behaviour. Persons who are members of the settled population also commit crimes and behave antisocially from time to time.”

Earlier this year, amid protests outside the hotel, the council granted a temporary injunction preventing 138 asylum seekers from being housed there beyond Sept. 12.

That decision was later overturned by the Court of Appeal, which described the ruling as “seriously flawed in principle.”