The Home Office will have a new crisis on its hands if more councils take legal action to shut down hotels housing asylum seekers, a former permanent secretary at the department has warned.
Sir David Normington made his comments following Epping Forest District Council’s successful High Court bid for an interim order to stop a hotel from being used to house asylum seekers. The authority argued the situation represented a material change of use in planning terms that had not been approved.
Tuesday’s decision has prompted several other local authorities to state an interest in following Epping Forest’s lead. Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch and Reform UK leader Nigel Farage both supported such moves. At least two Labour-run local authorities are also believed to be keen to pursue challenges to asylum-seeker hotels in their areas.
According to Home Office statistics published today, 32,059 asylum seekers were being housed in hotels at the end of June this year. The figure is up 8% from the end of June last year, when 29,585 asylum seekers were officially recorded as being put up in hotels. Around 200 hotels are currently understood to be being used to house asylum seekers.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Normington said the Home Office would be “in a bind” for asylum-seeker accommodation if more temporary injunctions of the kind issued to Epping Forest were secured by other local authorities.
“There aren’t many other immediate options,” he said. “Private-rented accommodation, hostels, bedsits, flats of various sorts. Perhaps a greater use of large sites like military bases, ex-military bases, camps and so on. I think there is scope for doing that but there’s not scope for doing it tomorrow, or next week, or next month. It will take time.”
The current Labour government is committed to ending the use of hotels to house asylum seekers. However, Normington pointed to the previous Conservative administration’s lack of success in setting up alternative provision.
“The last government in 2022 announced that it was going to acquire some large sites and it did acquire some,” he said. “But it never got to a point in the two years it had after the announcement where it was able to house more than about 1% of asylum seekers in those large sites. They’re very difficult to set up and get into the appropriate condition and they’re very costly to operate as well.”
Notoriously, at least two locations – the former HMP Northeye in East Sussex and the former RAF Scampton base – were acquired to house asylum seekers at a cost of more than £75m, only for plans to be scrapped.
Normington said it would be “desirable to have more large camps” for asylum seekers, but stressed it was “not an immediate response” to short-term pressure for places.
Ministers ‘should appeal against Epping Forest decision’
Former justice secretary Charlie Falconer, who served in the government of Tony Blair, urged ministers to appeal against this week’s High Court decision, handed down by Mr Justice Stephen Eyre.
Lord Falconer said the interim judgment and the 21-day timescale for the Bell Hotel’s closure would cause significant problems for the Home Office and raised further questions that needed exploration.
“The judgment in effect gives rise to the expectation that some asylum hotels can be closed,” he told the Today programme. “Through no fault of the judgment, it doesn’t indicate which can be closed and which can’t. Hence you’ve got this sort of stampede.”
Falconer also questioned the suggestion that the fact there had been disturbances outside the Bell Hotel in Epping supported its closure.
“I very strongly urge the government to appeal and get some certainty,” he said. “Firstly, on which should be closed because of breaches of planning law and which shouldn’t; secondly, to deal with a reasonable timescale on this; and thirdly, to deal with this very troublesome issue – namely do demonstrations outside these hostels lead to it being more likely that they will be closed?”