MIGRANTS will stay in the Bell Hotel after a judge today dismissed a landmark ruling despite an asylum seeker carrying out a sex attack.
The hotel in Essex found itself at the centre of protests after Hadush Kebatu was charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl.
He has since been deported to Ethiopia after he was mistakenly released from prison – sparking a manhunt.
Epping Forest District Council (EFDC) took legal action against Somani Hotels, which owns the hotel, claiming that accommodating asylum seekers breaches planning rules.
The Tory-led council wanted an injunction granted that would permanently ban migrants from living there.
But the company claimed the move does not constitute a “material change of use”.
Mr Justice Mould today ruled Somani has not breached any planning rules – meaning migrants can stay at the hotel.
It comes after Epping Forest District Council previously won a bid at the High Court to block migrants from being housed at the hotel.
The temporary injunction meant that the building had to be cleared of its occupants by September 12.
It also caused a ripple effect across the UK as more councils launched their own bids to boot migrants out of hotels in their towns.
But Somani Hotels and the Home Office gained permission to appeal after the Court of Appeal in found the decision to be “seriously flawed in principle”.
The Home Office also successfully challenged the original judge’s ruling not to let it intervene in the case.
Edward Brown KC, for the department, told the Court of Appeal that accommodating asylum seekers is in the “national interest”.
Mr Brown also claimed that kicking the migrants out may actually spark further protests.
But Robin Green, representing the local authority, said the council was forced into action when the situation became “intolerable”.
This was after a number of mass protests in the area – including one that saw some demonstrators clash with cops.
It came after Kebatu was charged with sexually assaulting a teenage girl in Epping in July.
The Ethiopian national who arrived in the UK on a small boat days before the incident, was jailed for 12 months in September.
He was later mistakenly released from prison but later re-detained and deported.
A second asylum seeker who was a resident at the hotel, Syrian national Mohammed Sharwarq, was also jailed for 16 weeks in September after admitting assaulting two fellow residents and two members of staff at the site.
