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In Epping Forest District Council v Somani Hotels Limited [2025] EWHC 2183 (KB), the High Court granted Epping Forest District Council an interim injunction preventing Home Office contractors, CTM, from using the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex, to accommodate asylum seekers. The Court’s ruling has temporarily halted the government’s repurposing of the Bell, on the basis that the Council had a strong arguable case of unlawful change of use. The injunction requires occupation of the Bell by asylum seekers to cease by 12 September 2025.
Factual Background
The Bell Hotel, an 80-bed premises on the outskirts of Epping’s market town, had been commercially struggling since the Covid-19 pandemic. The Bell had a history of fluctuating uses since 2020, including temporary accommodation for the homeless and asylum seekers.
The planning enforcement team of Epping Forest District Council had repeatedly contacted the Bell from 2020–2022 to make it known that housing asylum seekers was seen as a change of use by the Council, and as such, required planning permission. Without applying for permission, Somani Hotels entered into a contract with CTM in 2025 to accommodate up to 138 asylum seekers. In April 2025, the asylum seekers occupied all hotel rooms, with security and welfare staff present on site. The premises were no longer functioning as a conventional hotel with public dining and event facilities.
The Council drew the Court’s attention to the wider impacts on the local area: protests, pressure on local services and fear of crime among residents. These fears were substantiated by a series of reported crimes involving some of the occupants at the Bell, including arrests for alleged arson, sexual assault, common assault and battery (at [20]).
The Court found that the Bell’s owners, Somani Hotels, had acted deliberately in continuing to house asylum seekers despite being aware of the Council’s view that planning permission was required (at [57]–[58]). Eyre J stressed the Defendant’s conduct was not “flagrant” or “surreptitious”; Somani Hotels had acted openly and in good faith, though with knowledge of the planning risk (at [59]–[60]). In those circumstances, the Court accepted that the Council’s pursuit of injunctive relief under s.187B of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (‘TCPA’) was an appropriate enforcement response.
Most of our subscribers will have received a “Welcome to Substack” email regarding the UKHRB. To avoid any confusiong we wanted to assure you that this does not mean that we have moved the content of the blog from WordPress to Substack. Those of you who read the blog on WordPress will find it there as usual, completely unchanged. However, as Substack has become a popular platform for authoritative writing we decided that we should have a presence there as well, so the posts as they appear on the blog will also be on Substack, although there might be a slight time lag between the two.
Benjamin Seifert of 1 Crown Office Row joins Lucy McCann to introduce our listeners to extradition law. Listen to Episode 207 to find out about the statutory framework that governs extradition, the procedure, the types of challenges raised when resisting extradition and recent developments in extradition law in the UK Supreme Court.
We are looking for 4 volunteers to form our ’rounder-upper’ team, responsible for creating our weekly legal ‘Round Up’ of cases. Each person would rotate so it only involves crafting one post a month. The round-up goes out first thing on a Monday, and consists of a summary of recent authorities and also broader issues which may have an impact on rights e.g. legislative developments, NGO or UN reports, political developments etc. The focus of the article is not to be a general news outlet per se, but to provide an update on important legal news and developments over the past week. The new rounder-up writers will be given assistance and guidance in finding their feet from the editorial team to assist them in the first few weeks in getting to grips with the job.
Please note that applications have now closed.
Examples
Here are some (randomly chosen) examples of recent round-up articles:
Our blog style guide, which although not specific to the round-up itself, is helpful to indicate the style we are looking for.
Benefit to law students
We have found in the past that GDL and other law students find writing the round-up a very useful way to stay on top of legal issues in the field of human rights. Further, it is an excellent thing to have on the CV and your LinkedIn. It provides the author with a certain level of profile given the blog’s large readership and so is likely to be very helpful to anyone applying for pupillages, particular at chambers with a public law bent. Many across the legal sector and beyond rely on the blog to keep up with developments in human rights law. In the past, rounder-up writers have tended to be recruited as pupils to very high calibre chambers. Also, former round-up writers are in a good position to ‘graduate’ into becoming contributors to the Blog in due course if they wish.
How to Apply
We are looking for authors who can succinctly but accurately summarise key authorities and other developments. We are therefore recruiting by asking those interested to send the following to Rosalind English events@1cor.com by9 am on 4th March 2022. Please include your name in the title of each document. We endeavour to contact every applicant but, due to application numbers, prioritise successful candidates.
A 250-word summary in Microsoft Word of the case of Secretary of State for the Home Department v NF [2021] EWCA Civ 17 (https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2021/17.html). This summary should include a pithy explanation of the result of the case at the outset (do not leave the outcome to the end). We understand that it is challenging to distil a full judgment down into 250 words and are looking for a summary that succeeds in bringing out the key facts, the key legal principles and the fundamental reason(s) that the court decided the case in the way that it did. Any summary which exceeds 250 words will automatically be ineligible. Inclusion of the case name and citation at the start of the entry will not count towards the word limit.
For all the aspiring barristers interested in Clinical Negligence, Public Law, Professional Discipline, Inquests, Public Inquiries, Environment, Tax and more, 1 Crown Office Row are holding an online talk with their barristers. They will give tips for pupillage applications, life as both a pupil and junior tenant as well as talk more about practice areas and chambers culture.
Interested to learn more? Want to book you place? Details below:
The Brighton Declaration is the latest Declaration (see previously the Interlaken and Izmir Declarations) on the future (and reform) of the European Court of Human Rights made on behalf of the 47 member States to the Council of Europe, the parent organisation for the ECHR. Brighton was the venue, the United Kingdom having taken up the six month Chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe late last year.
The workload problem
So what was agreed? A nine page, highly influential Declaration, building on Interlaken and Izmir, which is primarily concerned with trying to make the Court system sustainable, since it is overwhelmed by the number of applications reaching it. Over 150,000 applications are currently pending before the Court.
This is the first in a series of posts analysing the UK’s draft “Brighton Declaration” on European Court of Human Rights reform.
Much of the criticism directed toward the European Court of Human Rights over the last year or so, in this country at least, has been that it is too ready to overrule decisions made by the competent United Kingdom national authorities. It is said that British courts have already addressed the relevant human rights arguments under the Human Rights Act, so it is quite wrong that Strasbourg should now ‘overrule’ them.
A recent high profile example, apparently, was Strasbourg’s finding of a violation of the Convention in the Abu Qatada case, despite the House of Lords’ earlier ruling, holding no violation of the ECHR. (See, for example, the Home Secretary’s expressions of frustration about this).
The leaked (British) draft of the Brighton Declaration (for commentary, see here, here and here) concerning the on-going reform of the ECHR is apparently seeking to rebalance matters in this regard, and perhaps put the Strasbourg Court in its place.
Chester West and Chester Council v. P (by his Litigation Friend the Official Solicitor) [2011] EWCA Civ 1257 – Read judgment / Lucy Series’ commentary
When assessing whether a patient’s care deprives him or her of their liberty, and thereby entitles them to the procedural protections under Article 5 (4) ECHR, the right to liberty, the Court of Appeal has ruled that the appropriate comparator is an individual with the same disabilities and difficulties who is not in care. The court also provided useful general guidance for deprivation of liberty cases.
P is a 39 year old man with Cerebral Palsy and Down’s Syndrome who lacks the capacity to make decisions about his care and residence arrangements as a result of his physical and learning disabilities.
In his speech earlier this week the Attorney General announced that he would appear in person before the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in two weeks’ time, when it hears Scoppola v Italy No2, a case concerning prisoner voting. The United Kingdom is due to intervene in this case, for reasons that readers of this blog will be fully aware of.
I agree with Adam Wagner’s comments that the Attorney General’s speech should (if I may respectfully say so) be applauded for the mature and positive way it addressed some very important issues regarding the future protection of human rights at both the domestic and European level. Here I would like to focus in particular upon what Dominic Grieve said about prisoner voting, and his forthcoming appearance at Strasbourg. On page 9 of his speech he stated:
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This is the first in a series of posts analysing the UK’s draft “
Chester West and Chester Council v. P (by his Litigation Friend the Official Solicitor) [2011] EWCA Civ 1257 – 
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