Court grants permission on all grounds in challenge to the Home Secretary’s asylum hotel closure process

Our clients have been granted permission to bring a High Court challenge to the Home Office’s process for rapidly closing asylum hotels and relocating vulnerable people across the country.

Background

Last year, the Government announced its commitment to ending the use of asylum hotels by the end of the Parliament, citing the on-going cost to the taxpayer. Since then, hundreds of people seeking asylum have been told that their hotels are closing and they will be moved elsewhere. For many who have spent years in unsuitable hotel accommodation, this is welcome news.

However, rather than moving people into suitable longer-term accommodation (at a significantly smaller cost to the taxpayer[1]), the closure process is often relocating people across the country into different hotels, usually at short notice. This system is impacting some of the most vulnerable people in the asylum system: pregnant women are moved from local maternity services, children pulled out of school including before vital exams, families with disabled children moved away from critical healthcare, and individuals with serious mental health conditions separated from their families and local support systems. These decisions are being made without any consideration of the needs and vulnerabilities of individuals, in breach of the Home Office’s statutory obligations and its own policies.

This chaotic system is not only causing further harm to already traumatised and marginalised people, but also imposing unnecessary additional costs on the taxpayer—undermining the very purpose of the hotel closure programme.

This case

In this case, our clients have spent almost four years being moved from hotel to hotel. As survivors of modern slavery and significant violence with serious mental health conditions, this instability has had a detrimental impact on their well-being and ability to recover from their traumatic experiences.

In November last year, the Home Office agreed that the family could remain in London while the eldest son finished his A-Levels. However, when the Home Office decided to close the hotel five months later, the family were told they would be moved to Scotland with less than two weeks’ notice. They would be moved two days before the son’s first exam.

Despite urgent pre-action correspondence from DPG, the Home Office failed to withdraw this decision, and our clients were forced to commence urgent judicial review proceedings. Within just three days the Claimants were granted an interim injunction prohibiting the move.

While the Home Office has conceded that the family should not have been moved to Scotland, it has since made several decisions to move them to different hotels in London without any assessment of their accommodation needs.

In June, the Court granted our clients permission to proceed on all grounds, including that the Home Office failed to properly consider their specific needs, comply with its own policies, and breached their Convention rights. Our clients also argued that the decision to rapidly close the hotel without any assessment of the impact on residents with protected characteristics breached the Home Office’s Public Sector Equality Duty. A full hearing will take place later this year.

This case is just one example of the chaos and irrationality of Home Office decision-making around hotel closures. People who urgently need to remain in London are being told that they cannot, while others whose vital support and services are in Bristol are being moved to London. We have also seen repeated cases in which the Home Office has reneged on previous agreements not to relocate people away from their local areas, or has proceeded with moves without considering evidence of their accommodation needs. With evidence from expert NGOs supporting people seeking asylum across the country, we intend to demonstrate that these are not isolated incidents, but part of a systemic failure in the Home Office’s approach to hotel closures.

PAP Project

For members of the PAP Project, please see two new PAP templates for circumstances where the Home Office has: (a) reneged on a previous decision, and (b) failed to consider evidence of accommodation needs prior to a move.

Team

The Claimants, and others in their position, are represented by a team from DPG including Ahmed Aydeed, Unkha Banda, Megan Smith, Ralitsa Peykova, Natalie Hawes and Megan Hovvels. Alex Goodman KC (Landmark Chambers), Maryia Peykova and Ben Amunwa (3PB Chambers) are instructed as counsel.

We are working closely with the charity Action for Refugees in Lewisham (AFRIL) which provides essential support and advice to asylum seekers, including those impacted by rapid hotel closures and harmful accommodation.

[1] See DPG’s evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee’s Inquiry into Asylum Accommodation regarding the comparative cost of hotel and community accommodation: https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/147573/pdf/.