In what is a hugely significant ruling, asylum seekers are due to be removed from The Bell Hotel after Epping Forest District Council was granted a temporary High Court injunction, which essentially blocks them from being housed there.
Despite an eleventh-hour challenge from Labour home secretary Yvette Cooper to have the council’s case dismissed, the judge - Mr Justice Eyre - ruled that all asylum seekers must be moved out of The Bell Hotel by 4 pm on Friday, September 12.
The Home Office had warned the decision would “substantially impact” its ability to rehome asylum seekers in hotels across the UK.
**ARE YOU READING THIS ON OUR APP? DOWNLOAD NOW FOR THE BEST GB NEWS EXPERIENCE**
The High Court ruling is a victory for all those who are concerned by the corrosive impact of the small-boats emergency on the safety of women and girls – especially the mothers of Epping who have courageously spearheaded parent-led demonstrations in their market town.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage is right to say that they represent the vast majority of decent people in the country. Despite being demonised by some quarters and portrayed as ‘far-Right troublemakers’, these concerned parents stood firm.
The local protests near The Bell Hotel began after an asylum seeker – who had recently arrived in the UK by crossing the English Channel on a small boat – was charged with sexually assaulting a teenage schoolgirl in the Essex market town (a charge he denies).
The mothers of Epping just landed the first hit against the system. Now for the knock-out blow - Rakib Ehsan
|Getty Images
Forty-one-year-old Hadush Kebatu is facing charges of sexual assault, harassment and inciting a girl to engage in sexual activity.
The three-star Bell Hotel is located just half a mile away from a Church of England co-educational school where teenage girls are a significant proportion of the pupil population.
Figures for January to March 2025 show that 72 per cent of small-boat migrants were males aged between 18 and 39 years of age – nearly three in four.
The top ten nationalities among small-boat migrants during this period included Afghans, Iranians, Syrians, and Ethiopians – originating from parts of the world with vastly different socio-cultural norms over the treatment of women and girls.
The ongoing small-boats emergency is one of the gravest threats to social cohesion and public order in modern Britain. It is placing an intolerable strain on community relations in the local areas affected by it.
Those who have already entered the UK without permission should not be rehomed in hotels – which are often civic assets of social belonging and commercial activity for established communities - at the expense of the British taxpayer in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis.
And it is not acceptable for the UK Government to shift asylum seekers from one local community to another – there needs to be a long-lasting and practical solution to the problem.
Anyone who is serious about social cohesion in modern Britain must support a radically selective asylum system which has hard-headed thinking on integration at the heart of it – one which ultimately serves the UK’s diplomatic and security interests.
If this requires the UK remoulding its own human-rights framework and severing its association with international conventions, then that is what must be done.
Without systems-level change, little to nothing will change when it comes to the UK's small boats crisis.