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 Conservative-led Epping Forest District Council lost its court battle in November, though last week announced it would challenge the High Court ruling that had rejected its attempt.
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. 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', over the last year. He said that concern was raised because it was done 'without any planning consideration'.
Philip Coppel KC described it as 'a matter of public and planning concern that, of course, goes wider than just the Bell Hotel episode'. The owners of the Bell - Somani Hotels - hotel group and the Home Office, which is intervening in the case, oppose the appeal bid. Lawyers for Somani Hotels and the Home Office claim that the council was doing an 'unjustified disservice to the judge's comprehensive analysis of the law'.
In written submissions for Somani Hotels, Jenny Wigley KC said that it 'firmly resists' the appeal bid, dismissing the council's grounds for seeking to challenge the ruling as 'mere disagreements with the judge' which should not 'be entitled to take up court time'. The Bell Hotel became the focal point of several protests and counter-protests last summer, during its third spell housing asylum seekers after one man staying there was charged with sexually assaulting a teenage girl in Epping in July. The Bell Hotel was used to house asylum seekers from May 2020 to March 2021, then accommodated single adult males from October 2022 to April 2024, with the council taking no enforcement action, a previous hearing was told.
This legal action has dragged on for months, cost hard-pressed local residents a fortune, and we still have no clear outcome. Even if successful, the taxpayer will be landed with an enormous bill.
The council won a temporary injunction blocking the use of the site last August, claiming that it was a breach of planning rules. The temporary injunction was overturned by the Court of Appeal, which found the decision to be 'seriously flawed in principle'. Mr Justice Mould then dismissed the council's bid for a permanent injunction, finding that the breach of planning rules was 'far from being flagrant' and that it was 'not a case in which it is just and convenient for this court to grant an injunction'.
A failed legal battle to stop asylum seekers being housed at The Bell Hotel in Epping has cost the council £566,000, it has been revealed. By February 2026, costs and legal fees had reached £566,000. 5 per cent of the council's 2026/27 financial year budget, the BBC reports.
As part of the legal bill, Somani Hotels Ltd was awarded £95,000. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood also received £66,000. An Epping Forest District Council spokeswoman said it was 'completely unfair' to award the funds to the Home Secretary, given that it was her policies 'that led to the appalling incidents'.
Somani Hotels Ltd, which owns the establishment, was accused by the council's lawyers of breaching planning laws by housing asylum seekers. Jon Whitehouse, leader of the council's Liberal Democrat group, believes the Tory council had been 'reckless' in its spending, accusing it of throwing money at the courts rather than 'going through the normal planning enforcement process'. The current status of the council's appeal at the Court of Appeal has not been determined.
How many asylum seekers are currently housed at the Bell Hotel or similar hotels in Epping is unknown. The total projected cost to taxpayers if the council's appeal is successful or unsuccessful remains unclear.