PA Media
The Bell Hotel was the focal point of intense protests and counter-protests over the summer
Asylum seekers can continue living at an Essex hotel after a council lost a landmark legal battle at the High Court to remove them.
Epping Forest District Council sought to block migrants lodging at The Bell Hotel in Epping by arguing its owner had flouted planning rules.
Mr Justice Mould dismissed the claim on Tuesday, ruling an injunction was “not an appropriate means of enforcing planning control”.
A wave of protests were staged outside the hotel in the summer, following the arrest of an asylum seeker living there who was later jailed for sexual offences.
The judge said he accepted “the criminal behaviour of a small number of individual asylum seekers” housed at the hotel had “raised the fear of crime” among locals.
But he rejected the idea that hotel owner Somani Hotels had shown a “flagrant or persistent abuse of planning control”.
It was also said there was a “continuing need” to house asylum seekers with pending asylum claims, “so that the Home Secretary can fulfil her statutory duties”.
PA Media
Multiple demonstrations have been held in Epping since July
A judge previously awarded the council a temporary injunction in August, but this was later overturned at the Court of Appeal after the Home Office stepped in.
Its lawyers told the court that if Epping Forest District Council was granted an injunction, it could encourage other local authorities to seek similar outcomes.
Tuesday’s ruling then superseded this and became a final decision on the hotel’s operation.
Reacting to it, the Conservatives said the court had given a “slap in the face to the people of Epping”.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said: “The people of Epping have been silenced in their own town.”
PA Media
Protests and counter-demonstrations have been staged outside The Bell Hotel during the summer
Hadush Kebatu, an Ethiopian national who arrived in the UK on a small boat and was convicted of sex offences while living at the Epping hotel, was jailed for a year in September.
He had been released in error from prison and re-detained after a three-day manhunt – before his deportation in October.
Some of the protests outside The Bell Hotel following Kebatu’s arrest turned violent – and three men were jailed in October for punching, kicking and pushing police officers.
Judges at the High Court hearings in October were told the hotel had become a “feeding ground for unrest and protest”.
