Political reporter
PASome Labour councils have joined Conservative and Reform-run authorities in considering legal challenges against housing asylum seekers in hotels.
Earlier this week, the High Court granted Conservative-controlled Epping Forest District Council a temporary injunction to stop 140 asylum seekers living at the Bell Hotel in Essex.
Now more than half a dozen councils have announced they are assessing their legal options and Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has instructed Tory-controlled councils the party will back them.
Asked about potential legal challenges, education minister Catherine McKinnell said Labour “inherited an absolute mess of an immigration system from the previous government”.
The leader of one of the Labour-controlled councils, Tamworth’s Carol Dean, said her authority had previously decided against legal action but was now “carefully assessing” what she called a “potentially important legal precedent”.
Last week, Labour-run Wirral council asked the Home Office to review its decision to house single male asylum seekers rather than families in the former Holiday Inn Express in Hoylake.
However, other Labour-run councils in Newcastle and Brighton and Hove have ruled out legal challenges, with the former saying they wanted to provide “sanctuary”.
The Epping case is the first time a judge has ruled in favour of a council over asylum hotels, because he council was able to prove “evidenced harms” related to protests around the hotel, which had led to violence and arrests.
Government ministers are now drawing up contingency plans to move asylum seekers out of the hotel by the court’s deadline of 12 September.
Further successful legal challenges have the potential to pile more pressure on the government to find alternative housing options for migrants.
Hailing the high Court ruling blocking a hotel from housing asylum seekers as “a victory for local people”, Badenoch wrote to Tory council leaders saying: “We back you to take similar action… if your legal advice supports it.”
A Labour spokesperson said Badenoch’s letter was “desperate and hypocritical nonsense from the architects of the broken asylum system”.
Under the previous government, the number of asylum hotels in use “rose as high as 400”, they said, adding: “There are now half that and there are now 20,000 fewer asylum seekers in hotels than at their peak under the Tories.”
At least four more Conservative-run councils, including Broxbourne, Reigate and Banstead, and Hillingdon, were considering legal action following the Epping ruling, shadow home secretary Chris Philp told BBC Breakfast.
“I think these councils are sick and tired of having these asylum hotels, housing predominantly young men who entered the country illegally, in these communities,” he said.
“They want to see them closed down.”
The Conservative leader of Broxbourne Council, Corina Gander, said she was “expecting to go down the same path” as Epping Forest District Council when filing a legal challenge to an asylum hotel in her area.
“We do not know who is in that hotel and it has brought an unease to the community,” Gander told BBC Newsnight.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has said all councils controlled by his party will “do everything in their power to follow Epping’s lead”.
But Reform spokesman Zia Yusuf conceded that only “a minority” of those councils have planning control.
The leader of Reform UK-led West Northamptonshire Council said he was “considering the implications of this judgment to understand any similarities and differences and actively looking at the options now available to us”.
Hotel use rose sharply during the Covid-19 pandemic, hitting a peak of 56,042 in 2023 when the Conservatives were in government, having previously only been used in short-term emergencies.
The Labour government has pledged to end the use of migrant hotels by 2029, by cutting small-boat crossings and speeding up decisions on asylum claims.
Home Office figures show the number of asylum seekers being housed in hotels was fell 15% between December and March this year, when there were 32,345.
Philp, who was a home office minister when the use of hotels dramatically increased, has written to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper calling for former military sites or barges to be used as asylum accommodation, instead of other hotels, flats or house-shares.
He also defended the right to peaceful protest, including outside asylum hotels, although he admitted “of course there have been some elements that haven’t been” peaceful and claimed some people were “understandably angry”.
Earlier this month, police officers were pelted with eggs, fireworks were let off and vehicles damaged after what started as a “peaceful protest” at the Bell Hotel, police said.
