A Excessive Court docket decide dominated that ministers can’t use a lodge to deal with asylum seekers in Epping on Tuesday. The query now could be the place else the federal government can place them.
The ruling, which centred on planning legal guidelines and located in favour of the native council, mentioned that The Bell Lodge, in Essex, isn’t an applicable place for asylum seekers to stay.
The decide, Mr Justice Eyre, has granted Epping Forest District Council a brief injunction, blocking the lodge from getting used to deal with migrants and requiring all of them to go away by 4pm on 12 September.
Politics newest: Council plan authorized challenges to migrant inns
However the ruling has a lot bigger ramifications than simply this one website, with different councils now stating publicly that they hope to observe swimsuit in difficult using inns in courtroom.
That may depart ministers asking the place else they could be capable to home asylum seekers, particularly if judges order a number of inns to shut.
Lodges
It’s price addressing simply what number of asylum seekers are presently in inns.
The most recent figures from the Residence Workplace present there have been 32,345 asylum seekers in inns within the UK on the finish of March, down 15% from the top of December.
At its peak, there have been 56,042 asylum seekers being housed in inns on the finish of September 2023.
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2:57
2:57Epping Forest District Council sought an interim injunction to cease migrants from being accommodated on the Bell Lodge in Epping.
In line with the Nationwide Audit Workplace (NAO), these in inns make up round 35% of all individuals in asylum lodging, with a report in April stating the federal government is now housing round 110,000 individuals as of December 2024.
Lodges are additionally disproportionately costly. Whereas these in inns made up simply 35%, in addition they made up round 76% of the prices of Residence Workplace contracts for lodging.
Picture:Lodges housing asylum seekers comparable to The Bell Lodge in Epping have led to a number of protests.Pic: PA
However the variety of inns housing asylum seekers is down, with the federal government pledging to finish using inns solely by 2029.
The quantity in use has already fallen from a excessive of greater than 400 in the summertime of 2023, to fewer than 210 now.
Homes and flats
The obvious various to housing asylum seekers in inns is to position them in unusual flats and homes.
This might embody properties rented from personal landlords and others from social housing suppliers. In line with the NAO, round 66,000 individuals had been being housed in flats and homes by the top of December 2024, which the Residence Workplace calls ‘dispersed accommodation’.
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2:22
2:22Nigel Farage indicated later that councils the place Reform UK is the biggest occasion will now take into account their very own authorized challenges.
In contrast, there have been round 38,000 individuals in inns throughout the identical interval.
The issue with transferring extra asylum seekers into homes and flats is that this can put added strain on already excessive rents within the personal sector, and result in offended accusations that migrants are being given houses forward of UK residents, additionally on council ready lists for lodging.
Picture:Tradesmen introduced their lorries; a big “Protect Our Kids” signal mounted on the again.
One current instance is the plan to deal with 35 individuals in flats above outlets in Waterlooville in Hampshire.
The native MP, former house secretary Suella Braverman, campaigned in opposition to the proposals and clashed with the chief of the native council over them. However the authorities has since introduced it’s not going forward with the plans.
Army bases or camps
One other place asylum seekers may very well be housed is in former navy bases or in specially-constructed camps.
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5:43
5:43The issue is that navy bases have been tried earlier than – and largely discontinued, on account of a scarcity of success.
In 2022, the then-Conservative authorities introduced plans to make use of ex-military services to deal with asylum seekers.
Some asylum seekers have been housed at websites comparable to Wethersfield Airfield in Essex and on the former Napier barracks in Folkestone, Kent. Plans to make use of a former RAF base at Scampton had been scrapped by the Labour authorities in September 2024.
Picture:Police outdoors the Bell Lodge in Epping, Essex .Pic: PA
However the Residence Workplace has since dominated out plans to make use of “large sites other than Wethersfield” due to excessive prices and a recognition that “accommodating large numbers of people near small communities is difficult to manage”, based on the NAO report revealed this April.
The earlier Conservative authorities additionally tried utilizing various types of lodging, introducing the Bibby Stockholm barge and refitting it to deal with migrants, earlier than mooring it off Portland, in Dorset.
Picture:A view of the Bibby Stockholm lodging barge at Portland Port in Dorset.
However security issues, protests and excessive prices noticed using the barge discontinued in November 2024 by the Labour authorities. The NAO mentioned the barge, which may home 400 males an evening, price the taxpayer at the very least £34.8m.
Whereas the federal government has beforehand said its intention to not use massive websites going ahead, this may increasingly have to alter if the courts make housing asylum seekers in inns unviable.
The NAO factors out that the Residence Workplace spent £15.4 million shopping for the Northeye website in Bexhill, East Sussex in September 2023. This was by no means used because it was deemed unsuitable, and the federal government was initially taking a look at transferring or promoting the positioning. Equally, the Residence Workplace additionally had a contract to refit former pupil lodging in Huddersfield for asylum seekers, and these may now be seen as an choice.
