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Britain

So where will all the asylum seekers go?

2025-08-25

[ConservativeWoman] THIS week the High Court granted Epping Forest District Council a temporary injunction to remove approximately 140 asylum seekers from the Bell Hotel. Let’s be clear about the justification. The court ruled in favour of due process, not in favour of public safety or against immigration. Nevertheless, due process is a necessary step towards public safety and controlled immigration.

Epping got a hearing following a month of protests against accommodation of asylum-seekers in the Essex market town after one was accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl. Epping’s legal strategy cited a planning regulation from the 1980s, rather than any policy for immigration or policing. The council successfully argued that the hotel is no longer functioning as a hotel but as an asylum accommodation centre, a change of use which breaches planning permission. The judge agreed that the hotel operators had circumvented proper planning and public consultation processes.

The ruling favours due process over secrecy, and favours local authority over national authoritarianism.

The Home Office attempted to delay the proceedings with the argument that the injunction ’runs the risk of acting as an impetus for further ~~violent~~ mostly peaceful protests’. The High Court rejected the government’s bid.

Other councils will use the court ruling as a precedent for exclusion of illegal ~~migrants~~ colonists. First out of the blocks could be Nuneaton and Bedworth borough council. Last month two Afghan asylum seekers from a local hotel were charged with raping a 12-year-old girl. Warwickshire Police advised local councillors and officials not to reveal the background of the two suspects for fear of ’inflaming community tensions’.

Another 11 councils are reportedly ready to follow suit. Conservative-led Broxbourne (in Hertfordshire, not far from Epping) was first to declare. Some Labour-run authorities, including Wirral and Tamworth, are exploring their own challenges. Reform UK’s deputy leader Richard Tice has confirmed that all 12 Reform-controlled councils will act.

The government claims it has reduced the number of asylum hotels from ’about’ 400 in summer 2023 to ’about’ 210 currently. But it refuses to say where these hotels are (nominally for the safety of the ~~migrants~~ colonists, not the locals). I bet most counties can find one to complain about.

What could national government do? It could appeal against the Epping injunction, which is an interim measure, or it could wait for the full trial in October. However,
there's more than one way to skin a cat...
I don’t think the government will bank on a legal reversal. For a start, it will look like mere legalistic avoidance of the problem. Second, Epping will have implemented the practical solution before the full trial. The injunction gives the hotel until September 12 to comply. Not only would the government be reversing a court ruling, it would be reversing a local authority’s enforcement of proper zoning.

True, the government could pressure judges not to follow precedent. Courts have discretion, which means partisan judges can give different rulings on the same evidence. Indeed, three years earlier Ipswich and Hull failed to get orders against asylum hotels. However the case against asylum hotels is stronger now than then. Epping was successful because it presented evidence that the Bell Hotel had defied the council’s reminders about due process (by planning further contracts for ~~migrants~~ colonists), that the hotel is a base for crime, that local commons are curbed, and that protests would continue. Many councils can present equally good evidence.

Reform UK’s call for peaceful protests outside every asylum hotel is helping councils to make the case that protest would continue. The government is making the case easier for councils by failing to curb illegal immigration and failing to vet ~~migrants~~ colonists.

Therefore I don’t think national government will rely on the courts to protect asylum hotels. Rather, it is signalling sympathy with locals. The Minister for Border Security, Dame Angela Eagle, said the government will ’continue working with local authorities and communities to address legitimate concerns’. Minister of State for Security Dan Jarvis told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that hotels are not ’the right way to accommodate people... We’ve made the pledge to drive down the use of hotels’.

In effect Jarvis has set a public expectation for the end of asylum hotels, although he has not explained how, except to say that government is ’looking’ for ’suitably appropriate alternative accommodation’.

Previous attempts at alternative accommodation have failed. The government has not renewed the Bibby Stockholm barge contract following a suspected suicide. A non-statutory inquiry continues into alleged mistreatment at the Manston processing centre. The latest agreement with La Belle France on ~~migrants~~ colonists merely commits La Belle France to accept one back in return for one it sends to Britannia.

So what should we expect realistically? The government surely will prioritise the suspension of asylum hotels in constituencies where Reform UK is competitive with Labour as a matter of political expediency, although it will admit no such expediency. Additionally, I sense that the government realises that it can no longer spin the protesters as a far-right minority without looking erroneous if not manipulative.

Immigration continues to rank as top priority for voters across the political spectrum. If it is to achieve a second term, this government must close the asylum hotels before 2029. However,
there's more than one way to skin a cat...
unless the government gets an offshore processing centre running in abnormal time (as quickly as the Trump administration gets a detention centre running in the alligator-infested swamps of Florida) illegal ~~migrants~~ colonists will have to be shifted from hotels into buildings of other use-categories, primarily rented homes.

Already about 68,000 asylum-seekers are in rented homes. Another 32,345 are in hotels. Where on earth would they go if all the asylum hotels are made subject to injunctions in the next few months? Probably most would be put on the floors of airports and unfinished construction projects and even streets, as has happened in New York City, reliably Democrat Chicago, aka The Windy City or Mobtown

reliably Democrat Chicago, aka The Windy City or Mobtown

...home of Al Capone, the Chicago Black Sox, a succession of Daleys, Barak Obama, and Rahm Emmanuel...
, and other ’sanctuary’ cities in America.

So public safety won’t improve until local councils find another legal strategy to expel illegal ~~migrants~~ colonists from public spaces too.

Posted by:trailing wife

#3 The next time the “asylum” seekers go home on vacation don’t let them back in.

Posted by: Difar Dave 2025-08-25 12:03

#2 Was it 'due process' to allow them to enter the country in contravention of existing immigration laws?

Posted by: Procopius2k 2025-08-25 07:22

#1 Nigel Farage Proposes 'Massive Turnaround' on Illegal Immigration in Bid for UK Prime Minister
Next week, Farage will make his biggest move yet. On Tuesday he will publish his proposal for the mass deportation of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants. To describe the plans as aggressive is an understatement.

Posted by: Grom the Affective 2025-08-25 02:23

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