Epping Forest council makes case for appeal against asylum hotel ruling

Epping Forest District Council has launched a legal challenge to a ruling against its plan to stop asylum seekers from being housed in a local hotel.

The Essex local authority wants to appeal against Mr Justice Mould's High Court decision in November not to grant an injunction blocking owners of the Epping hotel from accommodating asylum seekers. The Bell Hotel had become the subject of heated protests and counter protests last summer.

Barristers for the council told Thursday's hearing at the Court of Appeal in London that there was a "compelling reason" for the challenge to proceed and that the judge's decision was wrong. Somani Hotels, the group that owns the hotel and the Home Office, which is intervening in the case, oppose the appeal bid, with lawyers claiming that the council was doing an "unjustified disservice to the judge's comprehensive analysis of the law".

Philip Coppel KC, for the local authority, said the turning over of hotels from being open to the public to being exclusively used to house asylum seekers had "become a matter of public concern.