From Epping to everywhere? Conservative councillors urged to consider legal battles

No matter how loudly Reform may try to claim victory, the successful closure of The Bell Hotel in Epping Forest as an asylum hotel was the work of a Conservative-led council – and there may be more to come.

ConservativeHome can reveal that all Tory councillors have been sent a draft motion – produced by the Conservative Research Department and Conservative Councillors’ Association (CCA) – in the hope of emulating Epping Forest Council’s success.

The email containing the proposal, sent from the chairman of the CCA and the leader of the Tory group of the Local Government Association, reads: “We would *strongly urge* you all to consider following in Epping Forest’s footsteps, whether in administration or opposition.”

The motion – “drafted to help achieve this” – requests that council chief executives consult their legal team to assess the merits of seeking similar injunctions to prevent the use of local hotels for migrant accommodation “where it is deemed to be in the best interests of the community”.

It comes as Tory leader Kemi Badenoch wrote to Conservative-controlled councils “encouraging” them to follow Epping’s example and consider launching legal challenges against the use of hotels to house asylum seekers, while shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick has begun gathering “conservative-minded” lawyers to support councils examining their legal options.

The High Court sided with Epping Forest district council – providing it with a temporary injunction that will see all asylum seekers leave the hotel by September 12 – after the authority claimed that placing asylum seekers in The Bell was a “clear breach of planning permission” because it was no longer being used as a hotel.

The number of asylum seekers being housed in hotels has gone up since Labour entered Government because the number of small boat arrivals have soared – more than 50,000 illegal immigrants have crossed the channel since the election, making 2025 the worst year on record so far.

In Badenoch’s letter to Conservative council leaders, she wrote: “We are encouraging you and other council leaders to take the same steps if your legal advice supports it.” Having visited Epping at the start of the month to speak to residents, Badenoch added that the temporary injunction marked “a victory for local people led by a good Conservative council working hard for their community”, proving that Conservative local government’s can deliver “real plans” and “real action”.

Jenrick, who joined the protests outside The Bell last weekend, is marshalling sympathetic lawyers to assist councils who need help with asylum hotels or HMOs in what is being called ‘Lawyers for Borders’. It has already secured the support of a number of solicitors and barristers, including three KCs, alongside offers of financial donations.

He said: ”Every patriotic council, whether Conservative, Reform, whatever, should follow Epping’s lead and seek an injunction.”

The question for Labour is where the alternative lodgings for 138 asylum-seekers will come from. As Onward’s Sir Simon Clarke highlighted, the most likely option is HMOs further up the country which will “take them into some of the most disillusioned communities” and cause “another level of public anger”. The Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford sets out that regions taking on a growing share of the asylum-seeking population – London, the South East, and East of England – have relied on hotels, whereas in the North West, North East, and Yorkshire and the Humber, most are placed in dispersal accommodation.

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp, despite being an immigration minister when The Bell was first used to house asylum seekers back in 2020 – it was later slated for closure under James Cleverly in 2024 after Jenrick had begun the process the year before, but was reversed by Labour after rising small boat crossings – has written in a letter to Yvette Cooper that “people are furious about the number of illegal migrants being housed in hotels”, and pushed Labour to commit to ruling out the use of “hotels, HMOs, apartments, or social housing which are much needed for British people” to house illegal immigrants from The Bell Hotel.

There is some worry that mass closures of hotels in the South, with asylum seekers then sent up to communities in the Midlands and the North, would prompt people in these areas to seek someone to blame – and may look to the Tories.

One party source points out: “We could face a real backlash, being seen as the party who is going to Nimby this out of the prosperous south.”

If the hotel route is either entirely closed or significantly diminished, the option for government – as much as security minister Dan Jarvis may try to hide it – is to push it towards HMOs where it is arguably even harder to keep tabs or any control or accountability as people are dispersed into communities. The Tory source likens it to “playing whack-a-mole” as people are shuffled out of one community only to pop up in another.

Pointing this out is not advocating for the use of hotels, but advocating for stopping the flow that has made the use of hotels even an option to be considered.

Philp, in rejecting HMOs, suggested that Labour look to solutions previously used like “an accomodation barge” such as the Bibby Stockholm, or “former military sites”. But the latter may prove an especially awkward recommendation from the Tory shadow home secretary as they are often concentrated in rural areas.

Conservative Party chairman Kevin Hollinrake himself fought against a scheme to house 1,500 men in his constituency at former RAF base Linton-on-Ouse back in 2022, while Sir Edward Leigh, father of the house, objected to a similar arrangement at former RAF station at Scampton last year.

As Clarke observes, the real solution is further upstream: “You’ve got to really stop dealing with the consequences of the problem, and focus on fixing the drivers… by all means, councils can be creative in trying to move the problem on, but let’s focus on getting a proper fix, which all then boomerangs back to the central importance of the ECHR review that the party has commissioned.”

Although it may prove difficult to win the argument that the party is serious about this, he says having the ability to remove people back to France, to their countries of origin, or to Rwanda is the only route back: “We must get ourselves in a position where we can really say that we are prepared, with utter resolution, to do whatever is required to allow us to deport.”