High Court grants council interim injunction preventing 60 hotels from taking in asylum seekers
The High Court has granted Great Yarmouth Borough Council an interim injunction restricting around 60 hotels in the resort town from accommodating asylum seekers.
Asylum seekers are being placed by the Home Office and its contractors in hotels across the country amid an "unprecedented increase" in the number of asylum cases this year.
However, a number of local authorities have applied for injunctions in an attempt to stop local hotels from being block-booked for asylum seekers.
In September, Great Yarmouth became one of the first councils to seek such an injunction after hearing of plans to place asylum seekers in the Embassy Hotel. A hearing for a final injunction for that case is set to be heard next month.
The local authority then applied for a second interim injunction after hearing that the Home Office's contractor, Serco, had approached other local hotels about receiving asylum seekers.
The second injunction applies to an entire planning policy area (the 'GY6' area), which hosts around 59 hotels across Great Yarmouth's seafront.
The High Court granted the second interim injunction on Wednesday last week (23 November).
A spokesperson for the council said the council maintains that to house asylum seekers in the proposed way "would amount to hostel, rather than hotel use, which would be an unauthorised change of use in planning terms, and therefore a breach of planning control".
The council added that it has a local planning policy against changing hotels to hostel use in order to protect the amenity of the part of the seafront, "which is key to the tourist economy".
"The injunction serves to protect and enforce that policy and preserve tourist use of hotels in the specific GY6 area", it continued.
The final injunction hearing in the second case will also be heard next month.
News of Great Yarmouth's successful interim injunction application comes as a number of other councils have had their efforts to push back against the Home Office's policy curtailed by the High Court.
Last week, Fenland District Council – which said it was also looking to "stop the use of a local hotel as a hostel" – had its application for an interim injunction refused by the High Court.
Two weeks prior, a High Court judge refused to extend interim injunctions secured by East Riding of Yorkshire Council and Ipswich Borough Council ahead of a final hearing. In that same week, North Northamptonshire Council announced that its application for a 'without notice' injunction had been refused.
Stoke-on-Trent City Council also had its application for the extension of its interim injunction refused.
Adam Carey
