Demonstrators wave English and British flags as they march in a protest against housing of asylum-seekers at the Bell Hotel in Epping, United Kingdom. Photo / Getty Images
Britain is in the throes of a bitter political fight over the Government’s reliance on hotels to house thousands of asylum-seekers.
The issue has sparked waves of protests and counter-protests, legal challenges and court rulings, amid broader debate over immigration.
As of June, roughly 32,000 asylum-seekers in the United Kingdom are being housed in more than 200 hotels, according to the Home Office, with the asylum system far behind on processing cases.
The state of affairs has enraged both the political right, which is calling for mass deportations, and advocates for migrants, who say the hotels are not tenable housing.
A court on Friday local time, in a decision that overturned a previous ruling, held that a hotel which became an initial flashpoint in the debate, in Epping, north of London, could continue to house asylum-seekers.
More than a dozen local councils across Britain – including the Conservative-run Hillingdon Council and the Labour-run Newcastle City Council – are weighing their options.
“We strongly oppose the use of hotels as accommodation for people seeking asylum,” Councillor Karen Kilgour, leader of the Newcastle City Council, told the Washington Post. “They are not appropriate or sustainable, either for the individuals involved or for the local community.”
The ruling did little to ease tensions over the weekend, with more protests reported outside hotels at towns and cities across the country.
In west London, police said they arrested five people for disorder after a group of masked men attempted to gain entry to one of the hotels during an anti-migrant protest.
Tens of thousands of asylum-seekers traverse the English Channel annually, often in small, overcrowded boats, driven from home by conflict or political instability and seeking a sustainable place to build a new life.
A record 111,000 migrants applied for asylum – a protected status for migrants fleeing violence or persecution – in the year-long period ending June 2025, slightly more than the previous peak of 103,000 in 2002, according to the Home Office.
Of those who sought asylum in the past year, nearly 40% made the dangerous maritime crossing. Afghans and Eritreans made up the bulk of those arriving by small boat.
Under British law, the Government is required to provide housing for asylum-seekers who would otherwise be homeless.
Before 2020, many migrants were placed in rental homes or apartments, with hotels being used sparingly. As the backlog of asylum applications increased during the coronavirus pandemic, local governments became more reliant on hotels.
In 2018, just 4% of asylum-seekers were housed in “contingency accommodation”, including hotels, according to Oxford University’s Migration Observatory. By 2024, the share had shot up to nearly half.
The grievances over immigration, housing and public safety boiled over in July, after an asylum-seeker staying at the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex, was charged with sexually assaulting a teenage girl, a claim he denies.
Since then, hotels in London, Newcastle, Liverpool, Essex, and other areas have seen regular – sometimes violent – far-right and anti-immigration demonstrations.
After weeks of protests, the Epping Forest District Council applied for an injunction, seeking to prohibit the hotel from being used to house asylum-seekers.
There are some 138 asylum-seekers staying at the Bell Hotel, according to court documents. The district council argued that the hotel violated planning rules by accommodating them.
“The use by the Home Office of the premises for asylum-seekers poses a clear risk of further escalating community tensions already at a high, and the risk of irreparable harm to the local community,” Councillor Chris Whitbread, leader of Epping Forest District Council, said in a statement announcing the lawsuit.
A High Court judge sided with the district council last month, ordering the hotel, which is owned by Somani Hotels, to stop housing asylum-seekers by September 12. The Government and the hotel’s owner challenged the ruling with the Court of Appeal, which on Friday lifted the High Court’s temporary injunction.
Writing on behalf of the three-judge panel overseeing the appeal, Justice David Bean said the High Court had improperly considered the protests outside the Bell Hotel before granting the injunction.
The Epping Forest District Council said in a statement that it was “deeply disappointed” with the reversal but added that its “battle on behalf of our residents will continue” in October when the High Court considers the full legal challenge.
Nigel Farage’s right-wing populist Reform UK party has latched on to the Epping case, using it to propel its anti-immigration agenda before the UK’s 2029 general election.
Farage slammed the appeals court ruling, saying in a statement on X that asylum-seekers “have more rights than the British people”.
Last week Farage laid out plans for the mass deportation of roughly 600,000 undocumented migrants should the Reform party be elected to power in 2029, in response to what he has called an “invasion”.
He would withdraw from several major human rights treaties, calling them “barriers” to mass deportation.
Opposition to the hotels policy is found not only on the anti-immigration right.
Nick Beales of the Refugee and Migrant Forum of Essex and London said his organisation supports the closure of asylum hotels, adding that local councils should be responsible for providing housing for migrants instead of private companies.
“These hotels are awful places for people to be housed,” he said. “They’re unsanitary. They’re wholly unsuitable for long-term occupancy.”
Beales said migrants have likened hotel stays – which can last for years – to “purgatory”.
Because asylum-seekers aren’t typically allowed to work while their claims are being processed, “they’re unable to even begin trying to start their lives in the UK”.
“They just whistle away time fearing that they’re going to be sent back to the country where they fled famine, where they fled war, where they fled persecution,” he said.
Poor conditions at some asylum hotels have been well-documented in recent years.
In 2023, advocacy group Migrant Voice released a report describing what it’s like to stay at an asylum hotel in London based on the accounts of more than 170 migrants, many of whom described overcrowded, “filthy” rooms, “rancid”-smelling food and deteriorating mental health, among other adversities.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Government has promised to end the use of hotels for migrant housing by 2029.
Angela Eagle, Minister for Border Security and Asylum, has said that the Government only appealed the judgment in the Epping case so that “hotels like the Bell can be exited in a controlled and orderly way”.
Last week, the party unveiled plans to overhaul the asylum appeals system and reduce the backlog of cases.
The Home Office also plans to halve the amount of time asylum-seekers are given to find new housing once they receive a decision in their immigration case from 56 to 28 days, the Guardian first reported, further reducing the length of hotel stays.
While the number of asylum applications the country receives is below the European Union average when adjusted for population size, images of migrants jumping off rickety boats on to Britain’s shores after braving the English Channel have contributed to the re-emergence of migration as a top concern in the country.
The hotels issue has come to a head in Britain as President Donald Trump presides over an immigration crackdown in the United States, ramping up deportations, detaining immigrants in purpose-built facilities and making arrangements to deport people to “third countries”.
Nearly half of Britons say they would support “admitting no more new migrants and requiring large numbers of migrants who came to the UK in recent years to leave”, according to polling from YouGov released in August.
Of those who support such a mass deportation operation, 90% want to see migrants who crossed the English Channel in small boats deported.
In a recent YouGov poll for the Times, seven in 10 voters said they believed that Starmer was handling the asylum hotel issue poorly, including 56% of Labour voters.
Beales said the near constant unrest outside of asylum hotels has left migrants and their families living in fear.
“The attacks that are taking place around these hotels are absolutely horrifying to see,” Beales said.
“Nigel Farage talks about civil unrest, but he’s doing more than anyone to foment that civil unrest by encouraging people to attend these hotels and make the people inside them feel – at best, unwelcome, at worst, terrified for their safety.”
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