Badenoch urges Tory councils to challenge asylum hotels in court
Kemi Badenoch has called for more Conservative councils to launch legal challenges over hotels housing asylum seekers as the government faces a potential revolt from its own local authorities.
In a letter to Tory councils, Badenoch said she was “encouraging” them to “take the same steps” as Epping council “if your legal advice supports it”, reports the PA news agency.
Epping secured a temporary injunction from the high court on Tuesday, blocking the use of the Essex town’s Bell hotel as accommodation for asylum seekers on planning grounds.
Labour dismissed Badenoch’s letter as “desperate and hypocritical nonsense”, but several of its own local authorities have already suggested they too, could mount legal action against hotels in their areas.
The decision has prompted councils controlled by Labour, the Conservatives and Reform UK to investigate whether they could pursue a similar course of action. These include Labour-run Tamworth and Wirral councils, Tory-run Broxbourne and East Lindsey councils and Reform’s Staffordshire and West Northamptonshire councils.
Patrick Harley, the leader of Conservative-run Dudley council, told the Daily Mail it was looking at taking legal action, a verdict echoed by Richard Biggs, the Tory leader of Reigate and Banstead council. But Labour’s Newcastle city council and Brighton and Hove city council have both ruled out legal action.
In her letter, Badenoch praised Epping council’s legal challenge and told Tory councils she would “back you to take similar action to protect your community”. But she added that the situation would “depend on individual circumstances of the case” and suggested Tory councils could pursue “other planning enforcement options”.
Badenoch also accused Labour of “trying to ram through such asylum hotels without consultation and proper process”, saying the government had reopened the Bell hotel as asylum accommodation after the Conservatives had closed it. The hotel had previously been used as asylum accommodation briefly in 2020 and then between 2022 and 2024 under the previous Conservative government.
According to the PA news agency, a Labour spokesperson said Badenoch’s letter was a “pathetic stunt” and “desperate and hypocritical nonsense from the architects of the broken asylum system”, saying there were now “20,000 fewer asylum seekers in hotels than at their peak under the Tories”.
The letter comes ahead of the publication on Thursday of figures showing how many asylum seekers were being temporarily housed in hotels at the end of June this year. We’ll have more on this soon.
Meanwhile, students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland will receive their GCSE results today. Education minister Catherine McKinnell is on the morning media rounds for the government, while the shadow home secretary, Chris Philp is doing the same for the Conservatives.
In other developments:
-
The UK government borrowed less than expected in July, official figures show, in a boost to the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, as she faces pressure ahead of her autumn budget. Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed public sector net borrowing – the difference between public spending and income – fell to £1.1bn, down by £2.3bn from the same month a year earlier.
-
Stella Creasy and Richard Tice are pushing for Labour to allow a Brexit scrutiny committee to be formed in parliament, after the Guardian revealed environmental protections had been eroded since the UK left the EU. The Labour and Reform UK MPs argue that there is no scrutiny or accountability over how Brexit is being implemented.
-
The deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, has been hit with a legal challenge after she overruled a local council to approve a hyperscale datacentre on green belt land by the M25 in Buckinghamshire. Campaigners bringing the action are complaining that no environmental impact assessment was made for the 90MW datacentre, which was approved as part of the Labour government’s push to turn the UK into an AI powerhouse by trebling computing capacity to meet rising demand amid what it terms “a global race” as AI usage takes off.
-
England will sell off more than eight times as many council homes in 2025-26 as were constructed the previous year, research has found. Right to buy is depleting council housing stock more quickly than public housing can be replaced, forcing people to spend more money on private market rents and obtain less secure tenancies, a report from the thinktank Common Wealth finds.
Key events
Labour peer urges ministers to appeal against court ruling to close Epping hotel
Eleni Courea
Charles Falconer, a Labour peer who served as justice secretary under Tony Blair and was previously Keir Starmer’s shadow attorney general, urged ministers to appeal against the court decision to close the asylum hotel in Epping.
He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme the judgment “causes great problems” because it “gives rise to the expectation that some asylum hotels can be closed” but without indicating which ones. He said:
I very strongly urge the government – I don’t know what they’re going to do – to appeal and get some certainty, first of all on which should be closed … and which shouldn’t. Secondly, to deal with the question of a reasonable timescale in relation to this, and thirdly, to deal with this very troublesome issue: namely do demonstrations outside these hostels lead it to it being more likely that they will be closed?
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said that the Conservatives were wrong to have used so many hotels to house asylum seekers while they were in government.
Asked whether the number of hotels in use had been a mistake, Philp told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme:
Yes it was. We wanted to get it down. And we did get it down. In the last nine months we halved the number of asylum hotels and had that trend continued by now there would be no asylum hotels.
Catherine McKinell, an education minister, said the government was committed to ending the use of asylum hotels by the end of this parliament. Asked where asylum seekers would be housed instead, she told Times Radio:
That’s a big question. And one that I think we need to work very closely with local authorities and local communities to tackle.
Education minister Catherine McKinnell has said the government is “tackling” the barriers to better grades after she was asked why white working-class children are “doing so badly”, reports the PA news agency.
McKinnell said the question was a “really profound” one and that underachievement in that demographic “has persisted over many years”.
She told Times Radio:
We’ve seen there have been some improvements in our school system in the last decade, there have been over 30 years improvements in our school system. But this challenge has persisted, which is why we are very focused on tackling child poverty in the early years.
We’re extending free school meals to [an] additional half a million children. We’re investing in free breakfast clubs to make sure that children get that really good start to the day, both from a socialised perspective, but also food. So, we are tackling what we see are the barriers that are holding young people back, and also making sure that they want to be in school as well.
Students receiving their GCSE results in England, Wales and Northern Ireland on Thursday will have “support available”, McKinell added.
McKinnell told Times Radio:
I think whatever the outcome for these young people, they have worked incredibly hard, as have the schools, as have the teachers. So, it really is a day to recognise that and to celebrate, and also to mark how important it is that this is a springboard into whatever comes next.
So, for young people who are awaiting their results, whatever the outcome, there’ll be support available, whether it’s to go on to an apprenticeship, to A-levels, to T-levels, to vocational qualifications.
It’s a very exciting day for an awful lot of young people, their families and their schools.
You can keep up to date with the latest via the Guardian’s GCSE results live blog:
Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick has echoed Kemi Badenoch’s views, saying the country is “in a mess”. He told the Daily Express:
Every patriotic council, whether Conservative, Reform, whatever, should follow Epping’s lead and seek an injunction.
Tuesday’s high court decision has also caused a potential headache for the Home Office, which has a legal duty to house destitute asylum seekers while their claims are being dealt with. If planning laws prevent the government from using hotels, ministers will face a scramble to find alternative accommodation, potentially in the private rented sector.
Badenoch urges Tory councils to challenge asylum hotels in court
Kemi Badenoch has called for more Conservative councils to launch legal challenges over hotels housing asylum seekers as the government faces a potential revolt from its own local authorities.
In a letter to Tory councils, Badenoch said she was “encouraging” them to “take the same steps” as Epping council “if your legal advice supports it”, reports the PA news agency.
Epping secured a temporary injunction from the high court on Tuesday, blocking the use of the Essex town’s Bell hotel as accommodation for asylum seekers on planning grounds.
Labour dismissed Badenoch’s letter as “desperate and hypocritical nonsense”, but several of its own local authorities have already suggested they too, could mount legal action against hotels in their areas.
The decision has prompted councils controlled by Labour, the Conservatives and Reform UK to investigate whether they could pursue a similar course of action. These include Labour-run Tamworth and Wirral councils, Tory-run Broxbourne and East Lindsey councils and Reform’s Staffordshire and West Northamptonshire councils.
Patrick Harley, the leader of Conservative-run Dudley council, told the Daily Mail it was looking at taking legal action, a verdict echoed by Richard Biggs, the Tory leader of Reigate and Banstead council. But Labour’s Newcastle city council and Brighton and Hove city council have both ruled out legal action.
In her letter, Badenoch praised Epping council’s legal challenge and told Tory councils she would “back you to take similar action to protect your community”. But she added that the situation would “depend on individual circumstances of the case” and suggested Tory councils could pursue “other planning enforcement options”.
Badenoch also accused Labour of “trying to ram through such asylum hotels without consultation and proper process”, saying the government had reopened the Bell hotel as asylum accommodation after the Conservatives had closed it. The hotel had previously been used as asylum accommodation briefly in 2020 and then between 2022 and 2024 under the previous Conservative government.
According to the PA news agency, a Labour spokesperson said Badenoch’s letter was a “pathetic stunt” and “desperate and hypocritical nonsense from the architects of the broken asylum system”, saying there were now “20,000 fewer asylum seekers in hotels than at their peak under the Tories”.
The letter comes ahead of the publication on Thursday of figures showing how many asylum seekers were being temporarily housed in hotels at the end of June this year. We’ll have more on this soon.
Meanwhile, students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland will receive their GCSE results today. Education minister Catherine McKinnell is on the morning media rounds for the government, while the shadow home secretary, Chris Philp is doing the same for the Conservatives.
In other developments:
-
The UK government borrowed less than expected in July, official figures show, in a boost to the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, as she faces pressure ahead of her autumn budget. Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed public sector net borrowing – the difference between public spending and income – fell to £1.1bn, down by £2.3bn from the same month a year earlier.
-
Stella Creasy and Richard Tice are pushing for Labour to allow a Brexit scrutiny committee to be formed in parliament, after the Guardian revealed environmental protections had been eroded since the UK left the EU. The Labour and Reform UK MPs argue that there is no scrutiny or accountability over how Brexit is being implemented.
-
The deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, has been hit with a legal challenge after she overruled a local council to approve a hyperscale datacentre on green belt land by the M25 in Buckinghamshire. Campaigners bringing the action are complaining that no environmental impact assessment was made for the 90MW datacentre, which was approved as part of the Labour government’s push to turn the UK into an AI powerhouse by trebling computing capacity to meet rising demand amid what it terms “a global race” as AI usage takes off.
-
England will sell off more than eight times as many council homes in 2025-26 as were constructed the previous year, research has found. Right to buy is depleting council housing stock more quickly than public housing can be replaced, forcing people to spend more money on private market rents and obtain less secure tenancies, a report from the thinktank Common Wealth finds.
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