THE BELL HOTEL in Epping is a drab 80-bedroom coaching inn 20 miles as the crow files from Westminster. Since April it has housed up to 138 male asylum-seekers on behalf of the Home Office. Epping Forest District Council, which is controlled by the Conservative Party, contends that doing so constitutes a “material change of use” and the hotel’s owner should seek planning permission to convert it to a hostel. The owners of the hotel, on the advice of the Home Office, disagree. As there is a fine line between a hotel and a hostel it is for a court to decide, in the legalese, the “balance of convenience”.
