The Government does not have a plan to accommodate asylum seekers and did not listen to concerns that they should not be housed at the Bell Hotel, the leader of Epping Forest District Council has said.
Chris Whitbread, who also leads the Conservative group at the Essex authority, said that failures to improve the system for processing asylum applications were also causing distress “up and down the country”.
His comments came after the council was granted a temporary injunction on Tuesday blocking asylum seekers from being housed at the hotel, which has been at the centre of a series of protests and counter-protests in recent weeks.
The interim injunction granted by Mr Justice Eyre means the hotel’s owner, Somani Hotels Limited, must stop housing asylum seekers at the site by September 12, but the company could seek to challenge the ruling at the Court of Appeal.
Speaking to the PA news agency after the judgment, Mr Whitbread said the injunction marked an “opportunity for my community to start to return to normal”.
A hearing on Friday was told by barristers representing Somani Hotels that the venue previously housed asylum seekers from May 2020 to March 2021, and from October 2022 to April 2024, and that the council “never instigated any formal enforcement proceedings against this use”.
Asylum seekers were then placed in the Bell Hotel again from April 2025.
When asked on Tuesday why the council did not previously take legal action, Mr Whitbread said: “It goes back to 2020 when we were in the pandemic originally, and at that time, it was used for young families, women and children, which is completely different to having it used for single males.
“Obviously, we have always raised our concerns with the Home Office, whether it be the previous government or this government, we raised our concerns.
“This government decided to start using the hotel again without consultation and purely by instruction; they didn’t listen to our concerns.
“Five schools are in close proximity, a residential care home, lots of residential homes nearby, they didn’t listen to us at all, that is the fundamental difference.”
When asked what message he believed this sent from the Government, he said: “If I am honest with you, I don’t think they have actually got a plan. I think that is my real concern.
“We talk about one in, one out, well, that is a gimmick. If you talk about smashing the gangs, that was a gimmick.
“What we really need to see is a government with a serious plan to deal with this problem, and that obviously comes down to processing, where they stay while they are being processed, and actually speeding up the system.
“We are not seeing that at the moment, and that is causing a lot of distress to people up and down the country.”
The hotel became the focal point of a series of protests after an asylum seeker housed at the site was charged with sexually assaulting a teenage girl.
Mr Whitbread said that while later protests had been “more peaceful, more bearable but still disruptive” to the community, he had “never seen anything like what we have seen in recent times”.
He said: “I think what we have done as a council and what my brilliant team of council officers have done is actually take forward what the desire of residents is, to see the Bell closed, but do it in a sensible and proper way, and that is what we’re doing.”
Mr Whitbread also said that there had been “no conversations” about the next steps for removing those currently housed at the hotel.
Reacting to the judgment, border security minister Dame Angela Eagle said: “This government inherited a broken asylum system, at the peak there were over 400 hotels open.
“We will continue working with local authorities and communities to address legitimate concerns. Our work continues to close all asylum hotels by the end of this Parliament.
“We will carefully consider this judgment. As this matter remains subject to ongoing legal proceedings it would be inappropriate to comment further at this stage.”
