Jon Featonby, Chief Policy Officer at Refugee Council, argues that last week’s High Court ruling shows hotels are an unsustainable solution for asylum seekers, harming both refugees and local communities.
Last week’s High Court ruling on the Bell Hotel in Epping underlined what many local leaders already know: housing people seeking asylum in hotels is unsustainable, costly and divisive. The court concluded that the Government’s plan to rely on hotels until 2029 is not viable.
This matters profoundly for local authorities, who are on the frontline of managing the consequences of failed national asylum policy. From community tensions to spiralling costs, councils are left to pick up the pieces. The lesson of the Bell Hotel case is clear: hotels are the wrong answer, and we need practical solutions that protect both refugees and the communities they join.
Why Hotels are Failing Communities
Hotels were only ever intended as a short-term measure. Instead, they have become a sticking plaster for an asylum system lurching from crisis to crisis. At the end of June this year, more than 32,000 people were still living in hotels – four in 10 of them from just five countries: Afghanistan, Eritrea, Iran, Sudan and Syria.
This approach is unsustainable. First, it is exorbitantly expensive, costing taxpayers billions that could otherwise support communities and local services. Second, hotels are poor environments for people who have fled war and persecution – living in them leaves refugees isolated, vulnerable and unable to move forward. And third, they have become flashpoints for far-right activity. Across the country we have seen how protests outside hotels intimidate residents, divide communities and fuel extremism.
A Pragmatic Alternative
The Refugee Council’s new analysis shows hotels could be closed entirely by March 2026 if the government implemented a one-off, targeted scheme to grant temporary permission to stay, subject to rigorous security checks, to people already in the asylum system from the five high-grant countries.
This would not be a blanket policy change. It would be a time-limited reset, applying only to people who had made asylum applications before June 2025. All individuals would still undergo stringent security checks. But it would remove the bottleneck that keeps tens of thousands in hotel rooms, while recognising the reality that the vast majority will be granted refugee status anyway.
The numbers add up. At the end of June, over 33,000 people from these nationalities were in Home Office accommodation – more than the total hotel population. Moving them on would allow the Government to close hotels altogether, restoring order to a system that has been in chaos for too long.
Lessons for Local Authorities
The Bell Hotel ruling confirms what local leaders have long argued: hotels are not an acceptable long-term solution. Councils must now be central to the transition away from them. With phased planning, rent deposit schemes and support for the private rental market, a shift is possible. Councils already manage housing for other groups and, with the right resources, can do so here too.
Moving people into communities also brings clear benefits. Refugees in neighbourhoods, rather than isolated in hotels, are able to rebuild their lives, enter training or work, and contribute to the local economy. They integrate more easily, reducing long-term pressures on services and community relations.
As Muhammad, an Afghan refugee who spent six months in an asylum hotel before being granted asylum, told us: ‘People film residents outside the hotel without permission, using it in a negative way. It makes people feel hopeless. My friend has been in a hotel for more than two years — he is very talented, but the uncertainty is a mental disaster.’
Time for a Reset
The asylum system we have today is not ‘business as usual’. It cannot be fixed with incremental tweaks. It requires intelligent, pragmatic thinking – the kind of thinking both Labour and Conservative governments have used before when faced with backlogs. Our proposal builds directly on those precedents.
Local authorities, as much as national government, have a stake in seeing hotels closed quickly and safely. Continuing with the status quo will only deepen community tensions and waste public money. Acting now, with a time-limited reset, offers a way forward that is safer for refugees and better for local communities.
The choice is clear. We can keep pouring money into hotels, fuelling division and leaving councils to pick up the pieces. Or we can work together on a practical solution that restores order, saves money and protects communities.
