The Home Office’s bid to challenge the decision to temporarily block the owner of the Bell Hotel in Epping from housing asylum seekers is due to be heard at the Court of Appeal on Thursday.
Last week, Mr Justice Eyre granted an interim injunction to Epping Forest District Council, stopping the hotel’s owner, Somani Hotels, from using the Essex hotel to accommodate asylum seekers beyond September 12.
The authority asked for an injunction to be granted after the hotel became the focal point of several protests and counter-protests in recent weeks.
The Home Office and Somani Hotels will both seek to challenge the ruling at a hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, with the department also in a bid to appeal against Mr Justice Eyre’s decision not to let it intervene in the case.
The hearing before Lord Justice Bean, Lady Justice Nicola Davies and Lord Justice Cobb is due to start at 10am.
The High Court judgment has led to ministers bracing for further legal challenges from councils across the country and pressure on the Government as to where else they can house asylum seekers.
The latest Home Office data, published last week as part of the usual quarterly immigration statistics, shows there were 32,059 asylum seekers in UK hotels by the end of June.
This was up from 29,585 at the same point a year earlier, when the Conservatives were still in power, but down slightly on the 32,345 figure at the end of March.
The appeal bids come in the same week as a resident at the hotel, Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, has been on trial accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl last month.
Multiple demonstrations were held at the Bell Hotel after Kebatu was charged.
Another man who was living at the site, Syrian national Mohammed Sharwarq, has separately been charged with seven offences, while several other men have been charged over alleged disorder outside the hotel.
The council issued legal proceedings earlier this month, with its Conservative leader, Chris Whitbread, claiming that the authority was “frustrated that the Home Office continues not to listen”.
Barristers for the council told the High Court at a hearing on August 15 that Somani Hotels had breached planning rules by using the hotel as accommodation for asylum seekers.
But lawyers for Somani Hotels said that the hotel previously housed asylum seekers from May 2020 to March 2021, from October 2022 to April 2024, and since April 2025, and that the council had never previously sought to take action against it.
Shortly before judgment was handed down on August 19, the Home Office asked to intervene in the case.
Edward Brown KC, for the department, said that the injunction would “substantially impact on the Home Secretary’s statutory duties” to asylum seekers and added that the move “causes particular acute difficulties at the present date”.
Mr Justice Eyre said that it was “not necessary” for the Home Office to be involved in the case, stating that it would cause the “loss of yet further court time”.
In his ruling, the judge stated that the council had not “definitively established” that Somani Hotels had breached planning rules, but said that the company had “sidestepped public scrutiny and explanation” by housing asylum seekers at the site without planning permission.
He continued that “the strength of the claimant’s case is such that it weighs in favour” of granting the injunction.
Following the ruling, several councils publicly announced their intention to seek legal advice as to whether they could achieve a similar injunction for hotels in their areas.
Security minister Dan Jarvis told Times Radio the Government is “looking at a range of different contingency options” following the ruling, adding: “We’ll look closely at what we’re able to do.”
Announcing the Home Office’s intention to seek to appeal on Friday, Mr Jarvis said the Government had “made a commitment that we will close all of the asylum hotels by the end of this Parliament”, but “we need to do that in a managed and ordered way”.
