Epping council cannot appeal Bell Hotel asylum seeker ruling
Two Court of Appeal judges have said the appeal can't go ahead
Epping Forest District Council (EFDC) has lost a Court of Appeal bid to challenge a High Court ruling dismissing its attempt to stop an Essex hotel from being used to house asylum seekers.
The council wanted to appeal against Mr Justice Mould’s decision in November last year not to grant an injunction blocking the hotel’s owner, Somani Hotels, from accommodating asylum seekers at the Bell Hotel in Epping.
But in a judgment on Friday, two Court of Appeal judges said the appeal could not go ahead.
Lady Justice Andrews and Lord Justice Holgate said the High Court judge did not “duck the issue” related to planning law and that EFDC’s appeal was “unarguable”.
They continued: “There is no arguable basis for criticising the judge’s reasons for refusing to exercise his discretion to grant a declaration, whether as a matter of general approach or in the circumstances of this case.”
The two judges said EFDC had criticised the judge, claiming he had given greater importance to the Home Office’s legal duty to accommodate asylum seekers, describing the criticism as “hopeless”.
Lady Justice Andrews and Lord Justice Holgate continued: “The need to provide accommodation for persons present in this country, whether as asylum seekers or otherwise, is plainly capable of being a relevant planning consideration.”
The judges also said: “The court is only concerned with the legal issues raised by EFDC as to whether the judge’s decision is open to criticism on one or more of the grounds of appeal.”
Somani Hotels and the Home Office had opposed the appeal bid, with lawyers for the department telling a hearing in March that EFDC was doing an “unjustified dis-service to the judge’s comprehensive analysis of the law”.
Philip Coppel KC, for EFDC, argued at the hearing that hotels had been used to house asylum seekers “without any planning consideration” and that “it is a matter of public and planning concern that, of course, goes wider than just the Bell Hotel episode”.
The Bell was used to house asylum seekers from May 2020 to March 2021 and accommodated single adult males from October 2022 to April 2024, with the council taking no enforcement action.
It was then used for a third time and became the focal point of several protests and counter-protests last summer after an asylum seeker housed there was charged with sexually assaulting a teenage girl in Epping in July.
EFDC successfully sought a temporary injunction blocking the use of the site last August, claiming the use of the site was a breach of planning rules.
But this was overturned by the Court of Appeal, which found the decision to be “seriously flawed in principle”.
Mr Justice Mould then dismissed the council’s bid for a permanent injunction, finding the breach of planning rules was “far from being flagrant” and that it was “not a case in which it is just and convenient for this court to grant an injunction”.