The British government’s contentious scheme of housing mostly illegal migrants in so-called asylum hotels may come crumbling down as Nigel Farage-led councils across England are planning on launching legal challenges of their own after a court shut down the state’s use of the heavily protested Bell Hotel in Epping on Tuesday.
While the leftist Labour Party government of Sir Kier Starmer had planned to continue the Conservative-era scheme of — often over the objection of local officials — housing tens of thousands of so-called asylum seekers in hundreds of hotels dotted across the country until 2029, council legal challenges from councils may derail the project, the BBC reported.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has vowed that all 12 councils under his party’s control will “do everything in their power” to follow the lead of the Epping Forest District Council, which won a successful High Court challenge on Tuesday against the Home Office to shut down the Bell Hotel in Essex.
The migrant hotel sparked local and eventually nationwide protests — led by groups of mothers and other women — after an illegal alien from Ethiopia, being housed in the hotel at taxpayer expense, was accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Epping just days after crossing the English Channel. The case has yet to be proved in court.
The Home Office had attempted to block the injunction against the hotel by claiming that it may “substantially impact” its ability to house migrants in hotels throughout the country, which it claims is mandated under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR); an institution that Britain remains bound by despite Brexit as it is technically a separate body from the European Union that successive post-Brexit governments have refused to withdraw from.
At present, around 32,000 alleged asylum seekers are being housed in approximately 210 hotels. The scheme, first developed by the previous Tory government, came amid the emergence of tens of thousands of illegals crossing the English Channel in people smuggler-operated boats launched from the beaches of France nearly every week over the past few years.
While Prime Minister Starmer campaigned on “smashing” the trafficking gangs, his government has overseen illegal arrivals increase to a record pace, with over 50,000 landing on British shores since Labour came to power last summer.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, the first major politician to warn about the Channel migrant crisis, hailed the decision to shut down the hotel in Epping as a “great victory for the parents and concerned residents” and said that it should be “an inspiration to the rest of Britain.”
Writing in The Telegraph, Farage said: “Let’s hold peaceful protests outside the migrant hotels, and put pressure on local councils to go to court to try and get the illegal immigrants out; we now know that together we can win. I can say today that the English local councils controlled by the party I lead, Reform UK, will be doing everything in their power to follow Epping’s lead.”
The Reform leader said that the mostly “undocumented males who have broken into the UK illegally… should not be treated as privileged guests at taxpayers’ expense, and should not be free to walk our streets. The Labour Government must now answer the question: whose side are you on?”
Other councils, including the Conservative-run Broxbourne Council and South Norfolk District Council, have also indicated they plan to launch legal challenges against migrant hotels in their constituencies. Even two Labour Party-controlled councils, Wirral and Tamworth, are considering legal action, according to The Telegraph.
However, concerns have been raised that the leftist government may seek to transfer hotel migrants into HMOs (Houses of Multiple Occupation), private residences commandeered by the government. The use of HMOs may be more pernicious than hotels, as local authorities and residents are often not informed that they are being used to house migrants.
HMOs, typically organised by the same large corporations behind the migrant hotel scheme, have also come under criticism for posing a risk to the safety of women and young girls after two Afghan migrants housed in a Nuneaton HMO were accused of gang raping a local 12-year-old girl.
Nevertheless, the government appears to be panicking over the decision to shut down the Epping migrant hotel. Security Minister Dan Jarvis admitted in an interview with Times Radio on Tuesday morning that using hotels to house migrants is “unsustainable”. Still, he failed to provide a feasible alternative to accommodate the tens of thousands of foreigners. Jarvis was also noticeably flustered when pressed on how many other hotels had failed to meet proper planning regulations, as was the case in Epping.
The leader of the Epping Forest Council, Chris Whitbread, remarked on the decision: “This is a decision that’s important to Epping Forest, but also important to other councils up and down the country, and it shows that the government cannot ignore planning rules, just like no one else can ignore planning rules.”
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