Epping council should be allowed to challenge Bell Hotel ruling - court told
The Court of Appeal has heard from Epping Forest District Council over its bid to stop the Bell Hotel from housing asylum seekers
The Court of Appeal has heard from Epping Forest District Council (EFDC) that they should be allowed to challenge a High Court decision dismissing its bid to stop the Bell Hotel from housing asylum seekers.
The council is hoping to appeal against the ruling in November not to grant an injunction blocking the hotel's owner, Somani Hotels, from accommodating asylum seekers.
Barristers for the council told the Court of Appeal that there was a "compelling" reason for the challenge to proceed, and that the judge's decision was wrong.
Barristers for Somani Hotels and the Home Office, which is intervening in the case, oppose the appeal bid, with lawyers for the department claiming that the council was doing an "unjustified disservice to the judge's comprehensive analysis of the law".
At the start of the hearing in London, Philip Coppel KC, for EFDC, said: "Over the last 12 months or so, the turning over of hotels that have previously been open to and used by the public of all the facilities that they offer, to instead being used exclusively for the placement of asylum seekers, has become a matter of public concern.
"That it has been done without any planning consideration has served to accentuate that public concern and make it into a matter of planning concern, and it is a matter of public and planning concern that, of course, goes wider than just the Bell Hotel episode."
He continued: "You cannot disassociate what we say was the breach of planning control, the gravity of the breach of planning control, and the ramifications of the breach of planning control, from the exercise of discretion to grant or refuse an injunction."
The Bell Hotel became a hot-spot for protests in July 2024 after an asylum seeker housed there was charged with sexually assaulting a teenage girl.
EFDC successfully sought a temporary injunction blocking the use of the site last August, claiming that 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 that 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".
In written submissions for Somani Hotels, Jenny Wigley KC said that it "firmly resists" the appeal bid.
She continued that EFDC's grounds for seeking to challenge the ruling were "mere disagreements with the judge" and should not "be entitled to take up court time".
James Strachan KC, for the Home Office, said in written submissions that EFDC had launched a "misguided claim for an injunction" and that the appeal bid "represents a further misconceived step in that ill-fated journey".
He continued that the challenge should be thrown out as it had "no real prospect of success" and "involves a series of mischaracterisations" of the High Court ruling.
Lady Justice Andrews and Lord Justice Holgate will hand down their ruling in writing at a later date.