The government will breathe a sigh of relief this afternoon.
The Court of Appeal has ruled in favour, overturning a High Court interim order on Epping’s Bell Hotel which was intended to stop accommodating asylum seekers.
After weeks of local protesters – reportedly partly organised by the far right – calling on immigrants to leave, fearing an increase in crime, Epping Forest District Council took sudden legal action.
They argued that using the building for this purpose was against planning laws.
The High Court sided with the local government and declared that all asylum seekers would have to be removed from the hotel by September 12.
But Labour – and the Bell Hotel’s owners, Somani Hotels – argued that evicting asylum seekers without a plan contravened the Home Office’s statutory duty to immigrants.
And the Court of Appeal judges agreed.
Lord Justice Bean said the Home Secretary is legally expected by Parliament to make sure asylum seekers are not sleeping rough.
He also warned that allowing the order to remain would encourage further protests.
This court victory means that Labour will not be left in a difficult position again trying to find new accommodation for asylum seekers.
But there’s no denying that anti-immigration sentiment has grown across Britain, especially when this one case became national news.
The rise of reform in Britain is also a testament to the traction this subject is gaining.
Labour is desperate to win back all the voters it believes it has lost to the rising right-wing party, even if it also means losing left-wing supporters to back-up groups like the Green Party.
Although the building houses fewer than 140 immigrants as they have their asylum claims processed, it still became a microcosm of wider resistance to the UK’s immigration system.
Many other councils had threatened to take similar legal action against shelter hotels in their local authorities, prompted by anti-immigration critics such as Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch.
This whole thing also threw up a great paradox in Labour’s thinking around the asylum sector, which Keir Starmer’s political opponents are ready to exploit.
The government has promised to end all sheltered hotels by the end of this parliament (around 2029) – but in written evidence on the matter they found padding in favour of the scheme.
Claiming that the end of the shelter hotels is now “chaotic” and “disorganized,” government lawyers said they plan to conclude the program in a “managed manner.”
But the government also admitted they would face “significant difficulties” in finding alternative housing for residents of the Bell Hotel, especially given the increasing number of boat crossings.
So what does it mean to end it in a “managed manner”?
And avoiding one injunction doesn’t mean long-term success—especially since it was only temporary.
Epping Forest District Council could still be granted an injunction following a full legal claim hearing scheduled for October.
As Tory leader Badenoch wrote to X: “This decision is a setback, but it is not the end.”
She urged Tory councils seeking similar orders to “keep going” and offered support to all local authorities considering this path.
“Keir Starmer delivered the Rwanda removal plan, promised to crack down on gangs, yet illegal crossings are the highest they’ve ever been.
“Labor has run out of options, so the only answer is to dump the problem on local communities,” she said.
Farage took the opportunity to simply get one message straight on social media, writing on X: “The government has used the ECT against the people of Epping.
“Illegal migrants have more rights than British citizens under Starmer.”
Border Security and Asylum Minister Angela Eagle effectively called for more time from the public before they passed judgment on Labor’s success in managing this issue.
In a statement, she said again that Labour wanted to close hotels, like the Bell, in a controlled way to “avoid the chaos of recent years, which saw 400 hotels opened at a cost of £9 million a day”.
The Eagle added: “It will take some time to fix the broken system we inherited, but the British public deserves nothing less and we will not stop until the job is done.”
The question is, how much time will society give them before it takes over as another broken promise?
