Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch is encouraging Tory-controlled councils to consider launching legal challenges against the use of hotels to house asylum seekers in their areas.
Badenoch said Epping Forest District Council had achieved “a victory for local people”, after a High Court ruling blocked a hotel from housing asylum seekers.
In a letter to Conservative council leaders, Badenoch wrote “we back you to take similar action to protect your community… if your legal advice supports it”.
A Labour spokesperson said Badenoch’s letter was “desperate and hypocritical nonsense from the architects of the broken asylum system”.
The Labour spokesperson said under the Tories, “the number of asylum hotels in use rose as high as 400”.
“There are now half that and there are now 20,000 fewer asylum seekers in hotels than at their peak under the Tories,” the spokesperson added.
It comes after the High Court on Monday granted the Conservative-controlled Epping council a temporary injunction to stop migrants from being accommodated at The Bell Hotel in Essex.
The court ruled that about 140 asylum seekers must be moved out of the hotel by 12 September, giving the government limited time to find alternative housing.
Councils across England are considering similar legal challenges as ministers to draw up contingency plans for housing asylum seekers set to be removed from the Bell Hotel.
Historically, hotels have only been used to house asylum seekers in short-term emergency situations when other accommodation was unavailable.
But hotel use rose sharply during the Covid-19 pandemic, hitting a peak of 56,042 in 2023 when the Conservatives were in government.
The Labour government has pledged to end the use of migrant hotels by 2029, by cutting small-boat crossings and speeding up decisions on asylum claims.
There were 32,345 asylum seekers being housed in hotels at the end of March, down 15% from the end of December, according to Home Office figures.
In recent years, other councils have taken legal action in an attempt to close asylum hotels in their areas but in previous cases judges have refused to intervene.
Conservative-run Epping Forest District Council successfully argued its case was different as the hotel had become a safety risk, as well as a breach of planning law by ceasing to be a normal hotel.
The judge ruled in favour of the council, which made the case there had been “evidenced harms” related to protests around the hotel, which had led to violence and arrests.
For other councils to follow suit they would have to show the High Court evidence of local harm.
On Wednesday, a number of councils, including some run by Labour, said they were assessing their legal options.
In her letter, Badenoch told Tory council leaders they may “wish to take formal advice from planning officers on the other planning enforcement options available to your council in relation to unauthorised development or change of use”.
The Conservative leader of Broxbourne Council, Corina Gander, said she was “expecting to go down the same path” as Epping Forest District Council when filing a legal challenge to an asylum hotel in her area.
“We do not know who is in that hotel and it has brought an unease to the community,” Gander told BBC Newsnight.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has said all 10 councils controlled by his party will “do everything in their power to follow Epping’s lead”.
“Several of them are already examining the legal transcript from that case,” Reform’s head of Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) Zia Yusuf said, adding “only a minority of our ten councils have planning control.”
The leader of Reform UK-led West Northamptonshire Council said he was “considering the implications of this judgment to understand any similarities and differences and actively looking at the options now available to us”.
Carol Dean, leader of Labour-controlled Tamworth Council, said her authority had previously decided against legal action but was now “carefully assessing” what the decision might mean for the area.
She said it was a “potentially important legal precedent”.
Wirral Council said it was also “considering the detail of the judgement and how it might impact on planning consent for the proposed use of the former hotel in Hoylake”.
Last week, the Labour-run council asked the Home Office to review its decision to house single male asylum seekers rather than families in the former Holiday Inn Express.
If successful, further legal challenges have the potential to pile more pressure on the government to find alternative housing options for migrants.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said asylum seekers moved out of the hotel in Epping should not be put in other hotels, flats or house-shares.
In a letter to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, he called for alternative accommodation such as former military sites or barges to be used.
Speaking to BBC Newsnight, Conservative former leader of the House of Commons Penny Mordaunt said “Kemi is right to back local councils” but warned the consequence of stopping asylum hotels would be more people put into local accommodation and family housing stock converted into HMOs [houses of multiple occupation].
“That is going to be so much worse than hotels. It will alter the housing stock in particular,” she added, suggesting the availability of housing in the area would slim.
Home Office Minister Dan Jarvis told the BBC the government was “looking at contingency options” for housing those being moved out of the Bell Hotel but gave no specific examples.
“There’s likely to be a range of different arrangements in different parts of the country,” Jarvis said.
In June, ministers said the government was looking at buying tower blocks and former student accommodation, external to house migrants.
