Anti-immigration demonstrators have continued to protest in Epping after the Home Office argued the rights of migrants trump those of local residents in their bid to keep a controversial asylum seeker hotel open.
Dozens of marchers – some wearing hoods, others with face coverings and carrying English flags – made their way to The Bell Hotel, which houses asylum seekers this evening.
Earlier, Elon Musk took to X to share his thoughts on the argument presented to the Court of Appeal by lawyers representing the Home Office, branding them as ‘a government against its people’
Last week, Mr Justice Eyre granted an interim injunction to Epping Forest Council, stopping the owner of the Bell Hotel, Somani Hotels, from using the building to accommodate asylum seekers beyond September 12.
However this morning, lawyers argued the High Court judge was ‘wrong’ not to let Home Secretary Yvette Cooper challenge the district council’s application.
Following today’s hearing, protesters blocked the road outside the hotel, as they could be heard chanting ‘send them back’ and ‘go home’.
Many of those who made a bid to enter the property had arrived to the protest separately from demonstrators who had gathered earlier, letting off flares as they made their way to the building in an attempt to break a police cordon.
‘It’s all kicking off,’ one protester said. ‘We are so angry. We won’t stop.’
Elsewhere, concerned locals voiced their worries for a nearby primary school, Epping St John’s, with students scheduled to return next week.
‘We have no choice. This is children’s safety. It’s really scary. It’s a terrifying time,’ Lindsey Thompson, 58, told The Telegraph.
‘It’s so scary. They are not protected. The school warned parents in summer that children need to be careful. We really are so worried.’
The Daily Mail has approached Essex Police for comment.
Earlier today, Edward Brown KC, for the Home Office, argued the hotel is part of ‘critical national infrastructure’ and that providing accommodation to asylum seekers is in the ‘national interest’.
He told the court: ‘There is a national interest in ensuring vulnerable individuals, namely asylum seekers, are accommodated.’
Lawyers for the Home Secretary also warned the ruling could prompt further anti-immigration protests. In written submissions they suggested it ‘runs the risk of acting as an impetus for further violent protests’.
Mr Brown KC said the judge ‘erred’ in ruling the case was simply one of a planning dispute and asked for the Court of Appeal to discharge the interim injunction previously made in the Bell Hotel case.
He told the court: ‘The judge erred in declining to allow the Secretary of State to participate in the proceedings, given her unique institutional competence and her statutory duty… Her rights were clearly affected and she ought to have been heard in the application.’
Mr Brown KC also said in written submissions that at the time of the High Court hearing on August 15, there were 138 asylum seekers at the Bell Hotel, lower than its total capacity of 152.
Both the Home Office and Somani Hotels are seeking to challenge Mr Justice Eyre’s ruling at the Court of Appeal, with the Home Secretary also seeking to appeal against the judge’s decision not to let her intervene in the case ahead of the original ruling.
In written submissions for the hearing on Thursday, Mr Brown KC, for the department, said ending the use of hotels to accommodate asylum seekers ‘requires a structured response’.
Individual injunction bids ‘ignore the obvious consequence that closure of one site means that capacity then needs to be identified elsewhere,’ he added.
He also hit out at councils for using the guise of planning concerns ‘as a means of appeasing local political unrest regarding asylum accommodation’.
He said: ‘This injunction essentially incentivises other authorities who wish to remove asylum accommodation to move urgently to court before capacity elsewhere in the system becomes exhausted. That creates a chaotic and disorderly approach.’
The KC further suggested that the council had only sought to take court action in response to the protests that unfolded outside the hotel after an asylum seeker was charged with sexually assaulting a teenage girl.
He added: ‘The granting of an interim injunction in the present case runs the risk of acting as an impetus for further protests, some of which may be disorderly, around other asylum accommodation.
‘This is on the basis that the protests in Epping appear to be a material factor behind the decision now to bring this claim and not to take planning enforcement action as would normally be expected.’
In written submissions for its appeal bid, Piers Riley-Smith, for Somani Hotels, said the Court of Appeal should ‘exercise its discretion’ and quash the injunction to remove asylum seekers from the Bell Hotel.
He argued the ‘extremely high-profile nature of the issue’ created a ‘risk of a precedent being set as a number of other local authorities are reported to be considering similar injunctions to address the use of hotels for asylum seekers’.
Mr Riley-Smith said: ‘The issue of the use of hotels for asylum seekers is one of national importance and scrutiny given the role it plays in [the Home Office’s] approach to meeting their statutory duty.
He also said that Mr Justice Eyre – who granted the injunction – ‘overlooked’ the ‘hardship’ that would be caused to asylum seekers if they were required to move.
‘The learned judge’s decision has received unprecedented media coverage and has been cited as setting a precedent for further injunctions to be sought by other local authorities.
‘In the context of this national attention, and the real risk of further injunctions being made shortly, the appeal raises an important question on which further argument and a decision of the appeal court would be to the public advantage.’
The hotel was only one per cent full in August 2022 before it was turned over to the Home Office.
The Bell Hotel became the focal point of several protests and counter-protests in recent weeks after an asylum seeker housed there was charged with sexually assaulting a teenage girl last month. Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu has denied the offence and has been on trial this week.
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.
Judges are set to hand down their ruling at 2pm on Friday. The decision could have wide-ranging impacts on other councils’ bids to have migrant hotels in their own areas shut down, as other authorities have vowed to do.
If the Home Office and Somani Hotels’ appeal is successful it could see the temporary injunction removed and asylum seekers housed at the Bell Hotel beyond September 12.
But if the Court of Appeal decides Mr Justice Eyre did not make a legal error with his original ruling it threatens to collapse Labour’s asylum system, with further protests set to take place and councils across the country set to hit the Home Office with copycat litigation over hotels in their areas.
Today, lawyers for Epping Forest District Council – which brought the original case to close the Bell – accused the hotel’s owner of having ‘chanced its arm’ in breaching planning laws to accommodate asylum seekers.
Philip Coppel KC, representing the council, told the Court of Appeal in a written submission that Somani Hotels has ‘no realistic prospect’ of success in its appeal.
‘None of these grounds enjoys a realistic prospect of success,’ he said.
‘Nor is there compelling reason to grant permission to appeal in a case involving the well-established, uncontroversial principles of law to an issue of a broad evaluative judgement.’
Mr Coppel KC added: ‘Somani had decided to chance its arm. It knew [the council] considered the use of the hotel to accommodate asylum seekers gave rise to a material change of use, yet it did not submit an application of planning permission.’