Home Office intervention blocked as English council bids to stop housing refugees

THE Home Office has been blocked from intervening in a court case brought by an English council attempting to block asylum seekers from being housed in a local hotel. 

Epping Forest District Council sought an injunction from the Royal Court of Justice on Tuesday to prevent asylum seekers from being allowed to stay at the former Bell Hotel in the area.

If granted, the injunction would mean the hotel’s owner, Somani Hotels Limited, must stop housing asylum seekers at the site within 14 days.

The Home Office was not represented at a previous hearing in the case on Friday.

On Tuesday, the High Court ruled that the UK Government department could not intervene as it was "not necessary". 

(Image: Jordan Pettitt/PA Wire) However, at the start of a hearing on Tuesday, at which Justice Eyre is due to hand down his ruling on whether the injunction should be granted, the department asked to be allowed to intervene.

Edward Brown KC, for the Home Office, said: “If the injunction is granted by the court, it will substantially impact on the Home Secretary’s statutory duties.”

He continued: “The local authority should in fact have given some consideration to the wider public interest in this application.”

Brown added that the injunction bid “causes particular acute difficulties at the present date”.

Piers Riley-Smith, representing Somani Hotels Limited, which owns the Bell Hotel, told the High Court that the company supports the Home Office’s request to intervene in Epping Forest District Council’s bid for a temporary injunction.

But Philip Coppel KC, for the council, said that the Home Office’s request was “a thoroughly unprincipled application made in a thoroughly unprincipled way”, and that the department knew of the injunction bid last week but “sat on their hands”.

Responding to the Home Office's bid to intervene in the case, Justice Eyre said: “It is my assessment that the joinder of the [Home Secretary] is not necessary so the court can determine all matters in dispute in proceedings.

“Nor is there an issue which it is desirable to have the [Home Secretary] so the court can resolve it.”

He continued: “The consequences of the [Home Secretary] joining would be the loss of yet further court time. The impact of that is significant.”

The court is due to deliver its judgment at around 3.50pm on Tuesday.