Home office loses bid to push back Epping Council’s legal challenge following asylum hotel protests
The Home Office has lost a bid to delay Epping Forest District Council’s (EFDC’s) legal challenge against the owner of the Bell Hotel over its controversial use as accommodation for asylum seekers.
Listen to this article
Barristers for the department told a hearing on Thursday that the trial of the council’s claim, scheduled for the week of October 13, should be delayed by six weeks to allow for a “period of reflection”.
It comes after a Court of Appeal ruling last week overturned a temporary injunction - which would have stopped asylum seekers from staying at the Essex hotel at the centre of several heated protests over the summer - beyond September 12.
The council opposed the bid to adjourn the hearing, with its lawyers telling the court that the case should “proceed apace”.
Dismissing the Home Office's bid, Mr Justice Eyre said the council was “entitled to proceed with its claim”.
“I have to assume that the claimant, as a responsible public body, will reflect on the points raised in any event.
“It is in the interests of all that the matters affecting the Bell Hotel are resolved in a reasonably expeditious way," he said.
Read more: Epping council refused right to appeal decision to keep The Bell Hotel housing asylum seekers
Philip Coppel KC, for Epping Forest District Council, had argued: “Epping Forest is well within its powers and justified in seeking the injunction that it has.”
He continued that the injunction bid “is not simply a question of protests” and that the current situation was “not acceptable”.
He said: “Apart from an injunction, there is no effective way of bringing this breach of planning control to an end before many, many months, possibly years, have gone by.”
He concluded: “This matter should proceed, and proceed apace.”
But Elana Kaymer, for Somani Hotels, which owns the Bell Hotel, said the company supported the bid to push back the full hearing.
She said: “We would welcome Epping reflecting and deciding whether other enforcement action would be more appropriate.”
Ms Kaymer also said Somani Hotels would apply for a “lawful development certificate” for the Bell Hotel during the six-week pause, if granted.
Protests over the Bell Hotel first broke out after an asylum seeker being housed there was charged with sexually assaulting a teenage girl last month. He has denied the charges.
The unrest led one senior police officer to warn that Britain is facing "a climate of increasing tension and polarity", after figures revealed police forces across the country dealt with more than 3,000 demonstrations over three months this summer.