A council seeking to block the use of an Essex hotel as accommodation for asylum seekers has accused Shabana Mahmood of ‘denying the legitimacy’ of local residents’ concerns.
Lawyers for Epping Forest District Council (EFDC) said the Home Secretary had ‘sided with’ the owner of the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex, and ‘taken a position against’ local people.
EFDC’s legal action in the High Court claims accommodating asylum seekers at the property is a ‘serious, flagrant and continuing’ breach of planning laws.
The hotel, a former 16th century coaching inn, was focal point of protests after an asylum seeker housed there was charged with sexually assaulting woman and a 14-year-old girl in July.
Hadush Kebatu, an Ethiopian national who arrived in the UK on a small boat days before the incident, was jailed for 12 months in September.
A second asylum seeker who was a resident at the hotel, Syrian national Mohammed Sharwarq, was also jailed for 16 weeks last month after admitting assaulting two fellow residents and two members of staff at the site.
EFDC is seeking a permanent injunction against the Bell Hotel’s owners which would stop the property being used to house asylum seekers.
Thousands attended marches in the summer sparked after an asylum seeker living in the hotel wascharged – and later convicted – of sexually assaulting a teenage girl and a woman in Epping. Pictured: Police gathered outside the Bell Hotel
The Bell Hotel in the Essex town, which homes around 150 asylum seekers, became the focal point of a series intense protests and counter-protests over the summer
The council secured a temporary injunction on August 19 – leaving Labour’s asylum policy in disarray – but it was later overturned by the Court of Appeal.
Philip Coppel KC, for the council, told the court on Wednesday that shifting the use of the Bell Hotel to accommodate asylum seekers was a ‘material change of use that requires planning permission’.
‘The applicant regrets the Secretary of State has decided to side with the commercial operators and has taken a position against those living and working in Epping.’ Mr Coppel said.
‘It’s a posture that denies the legitimacy of the planning concerns of those living, working and otherwise being in the Epping area.
‘The Secretary of State’s occupation with meeting her duties to asylum seekers has clouded her judgement by subordinating the legitimate concerns of those living and working in Epping, as if they matter not.’
It accused owners Somani Hotels of breaching planning laws by failing to secure permission to change the use of the building.
Mr Coppel said Somani had shown ‘no intention of ceasing to use the Bell Hotel to accommodate asylum seekers for the foreseeable future’.
‘Apart from an injunction there is no other way the council can bring an end to this breach of planning control for at least a year, possibly quite more than a year,’ he went on.
‘An injunction is just, convenient and appropriate as a response to this continued breach of planning control.’
He told the court there were ‘locations anywhere in the country’ where asylum seekers could be housed without breaching planning laws, such as an ‘extensive supply of Crown land including disused military sites’.
Jenny Wigley KC, for Somani Hotels, said in written submissions that there had been ‘no breach’ of planning laws and described the council’s decision-making process as ‘seriously flawed’.
The barrister added the Bell had ‘been in financial decline for many years and was not a social hub in the community even prior to when it was closed for Covid in 2020.’
There was violence outside the hotel in August after anti-immigration campaigners clashed with ‘anti-racism’ demonstrators.
Ethiopian national Hadush Kebatu (pictured) who tried to kiss a schoolgirl before groping a woman who came to her aid was jailed for 12 months
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood was accused of ‘siding against local people’ in the row over using Epping’s Bell Hotel to house asylum seekers
Activists brawled in the streets while police battled to contain the chaos.
Epping residents have repeatedly voiced concerns about the pressure on local services, while women and girls said they felt under threat in the wake of the sexual assaults committed by Kebatu.
District Judge Christopher Williams at Chelmsford magistrates’ court, sentencing 41-year-old Kebatu last month, told the Ethiopian that his behaviour ‘highlights the poor regard you must have for women’.
In the previous hearings for a temporary injunction, EFDC’s barristers told the High Court use of the hotel as asylum accommodation was causing a ‘very serious problem’ which ‘could not be much worse’.
Following the Court of Appeal’s overturning of the temporary injunction the then asylum minister Dame Angela Eagle said the Government was committed to closing all asylum hotels by the end of this Parliament.
Protesters outside London’s High Court last month after an earlier hearing in Epping Forest District Council’s bid to shut down the Bell Hotel
Protestors march along the streets near the hotel raising red smoke flares aloft as others held signs
But she added that it appealed against the High Court ruling so that hotel use can be ended in a ‘controlled and orderly way’.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer also said that he ‘completely’ understood people’s concerns about migration, adding: ‘When it comes to the asylum hotels, I want them emptied.’
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said after the ruling that Sir Keir ‘puts the rights of illegal immigrants above the rights of British people’.
EFDC is a Conservative minority-led council after two councillors resigned from the party last month to sit as independents.
The Home Office is intervening in the latest case before Mr Justice Mould, which is due to last three days.