Asylum seekers can continue to be housed in the Bell Hotel in Essex after the local council failed to secure a High Court injunction that would block them from living there.
Epping Forest District Council (EFDC) had tried to take legal action against Somani Hotels, which owns the Hotel, claiming that accommodating asylum seekers there breaches planning rules.
Lawyers for Epping Forest District Council (EFDC) said the housing of asylum seekers is a “material change of use” and has caused “increasingly regular protests.”
The Home Office intervened in the case, telling the court the council’s bid was “misconceived.”
]The Bell became the focal point of several protests and counter-protests in the summer after an asylum seeker housed there was charged with sexually assaulting a teenage girl in Epping in July.
Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, an Ethiopian national who arrived in the UK on a small boat days before the incident, was jailed for 12 months in September.
He was later mistakenly released from prison and re-detained.
Mr Justice Mould dismissed the claim on Tuesday and said in a judgment that it is “not a case in which it is just and convenient for this court to grant an injunction”.
The Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex has been a focal point of protests
|
PAEFDC were granted a temporary injunction earlier this year following protests outside the hotel, which would have stopped 138 asylum seekers being housed there beyond September 12.
But this was overturned by the Court of Appeal in August, which found the decision to be “seriously flawed in principle.”
EFDC then sought a permanent injunction through a three-day hearing last month.
More to follow…