No one was surprised outside the Bell Hotel in Epping. Instead, as word spread that an injunction – which would have blocked asylum seekers from being housed there – was overturned, there was an air of outrage, suspicion and conspiracy.
“That was a foregone conclusion, wasn’t it? That judge is a Labour voter”; “I watched it on the news and before the judge even summed up, the graphic was up saying the ruling had been overturned.” David, 71, a retired IT consultant, told me he travelled some 50km to express his contempt: “I was listening at home in South London, and I could see which way the judge’s ruling was going… and felt I had to go and show that I don’t approve of the decision.” This case has already become part of a nationwide campaign of nationalism and ill-will towards migrants, and the emotions it has provoked show that even if the government has won this legal battle, the political war over asylum and immigration policy continues.
In anticipation of any response, there was a strong police presence outside The Bell, which was fenced off. Car horns boomed from the linked road, and a number of Union Jacks and St George’s flags flew high, but the turnout was relatively modest, with no more than 30 people present at any given time. Some of the 138 men currently residing in The Bell made sporadic appearances, looking nervous as, via police van, they were hastily delivered between the tiny gaps in the barriers and led back inside the hotel. Three men were arrested in the protests last night, one for violent disorder, one for assaulting a police officer, and another for drink-driving.
Among the locals gathered on the other side of the fence, sympathies were limited for those who were claiming asylum. “I’m not heartless. There’s potentially good people there that have just done it the wrong way,” Liz Stevens, 61, told me. “But you can’t just shove them out with everybody else… We’ve now got a shoplifting problem, a harassment problem… they are problematic.” Roger, a 71-year-old Epping resident, said that he felt “no sympathy whatsoever” for those in The Bell. Did he feel the same way when it was predominantly Ukrainian refugees claiming asylum? “No. The Ukrainians are genuine people; they came over here because of that slag, Putin. He’s butchering them.” He added: “You don’t know who these applicants are, or where they come from. Nine times out of ten, they’re not in danger.” (Home Office statistics runs against this assumption: in the year to March 2025, 47 per cent of initial decisions on asylum claims were grants of protection, meaning that an applicant had been awarded refugee status or humanitarian protection.)
On Friday 29 August, in the Court of Appeal, Lord Justice Bean overturned a ruling made earlier this month in the High Court – brought forward by Epping Forest District Council, and subsequently challenged by the Home Office and the owners of The Bell Hotel. The ruling would have forced the asylum seekers to leave the site by 12 September. The grounds for the initial High Court ruling were “seriously flawed in principle,” Lord Justice Bean said, adding that the previous judge’s approach “ignores the obvious consequence that the closure of one site means capacity needs to be identified elsewhere in the system.” (Epping Forest District Council has not ruled out taking its case to the Supreme Court.)
Fewer than 210 hotels are being used to house asylum seekers, but The Bell has become the national focal point of discontent and anger. Hordes of people have come from across the country to protest there – protests which have become increasingly impassioned and occasionally violent after a hotel resident was charged with the sexual assault of a 14-year-old (which he denies).
The Home Office and Labour will be relieved to have won the appeal: had it been denied, it is likely that other disgruntled councils would have brought (and won) similar cases, putting the ability of the Home Office to uphold its statutory duties to asylum seekers, including the provision of accommodation, and prevention of destitution, at risk.
Meanwhile, Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage have competed to display their outrage. The ruling “puts the rights of illegal immigrants above the rights of the British people”, said the leader of the opposition; migrants apparently now have “more rights than the British people under Starmer”, according to the leader of Reform. Labour has long decried its association with asylum hotels (which were first introduced by the Conservatives in 2020) and has pledged to stop the use of such accommodation altogether in “a controlled and orderly way” by 2029. “We all want the same thing, which is to get out of asylum hotels,” Asylum Minister Angela Eagle said following the ruling.
Those living inside the Bell seemingly want out too – to have a decision on their asylum claims that could see them escape the hostility on their doorstep. “When we walk past a woman with a child, she pulls the child behind her as if we are going to take them – it is so painful to see,” one resident said in July. “We are not here to hurt you… we feel uncomfortable and there is a lot of tension; people treat us like we’re criminals and say insulting words.” Another, who had been chased by a group of men, said he is “very scared”. But Home Office delays in processing applications mount: over 70,500 cases (relating to 90,812 people) were awaiting an initial decision at the end of June.
What happens next? In the case of The Bell Hotel, a full High Court hearing to decide on a permanent injunction is expected in October (yesterday’s overturned ruling was over a temporary block). But the wider context is far from resolved. Labour believes that by ending the use of hotels to house vulnerable people claiming asylum, it is dealing with its current predicament. But in its plan to increasingly put those awaiting a decision in HMOs (Houses of Multiple Occupation) across the country, the government is not actually solving the problem – it is outsourcing it, and embedding it within the communities.
[See also: One year on, tensions still circle Britain’s asylum-seeker hotels]
Content from our partners
Related
Join the debate
Subscribe here to comment