Tag: Asylum seekers

Court of Appeal Cuts Down Epping Forest

It was interesting YouTube viewing this afternoon (29 August 2025) wasn’t it? A press summary has been released, which is what Bean LJ read out. A longer full text judgment will be published later today or Monday.

I cover Eyre J’s first instance ruling in my 20 August 2025 blog post Planning Law Is Being Used For Politicking About Asylum Seekers. But we can now forget about that ruling. The Court of Appeal has overturned it, with robust criticism both of Eyre J’s approach and, it must be said, that of Epping Forest District Council.

Kemi Badenoch, leader of the Conservative Party, has subsequently issued a statement urging council’s seeking similar injunctions to “KEEP GOING!”. That is reckless advice.

Nigel Farage, leader of Reform, has Xed:

“The government has used ECHR against the people of Epping.

Illegal migrants have more rights than the British people under Starmer”

Again, recklessly wrong, inflammatory even. And, as you will see, the rights of asylum seekers (not “illegal”, not “migrants”) under the European Convention on Human Rights played no part in the Court of Appeal’s reasoning.

Eyre J’s rulings in Epping Forest District Council v Somani Hotels Limited (19 August 2025) were:

  • To refuse to allow the Home Secretary to be joined as a party to the proceedings
  • To grant an interim injunction requiring the hotel to be vacated of asylum seekers by 12 September, until a final ruling in the proceedings at a full hearing which will take place in mid-October 2025
  • To refuse an interim declaration that the use of the hotel for asylum seekers’ accommodation is a breach of planning control (Epping Forest District Council subsequently, wrongly, represented in its subsequent press statement that the declaration had been granted but had to retract that when contacted by Planning magazine!).

Today’s appeals by the Home Secretary and Somani Hotels Limited were in respect of the first two matters and were successful.

Home Secretary to be joined as a party

From the press summary of the Court of Appeal’s judgment:

“The judge denied himself the opportunity to consider the wider range of public interest factors which would be relevant to this application; these, in our view, rendered it more than just merely ‘desirable’ that the Home Secretary be enabled to participate in the court process.  The judge needed to put himself in a position to determine the application from the most informed perspective.”

Grant of the temporary injunction

The Court of Appeal found that although the question of  whether to grant an interim injunction is a matter for the discretion of the judge, only to be set aside where the appeal court identifies “a flaw or flaws in the judge’s treatment of the question to be decided, such as an error of law, a gap in logic, or a failure to take account of some material factor, which undermines the cogency of the conclusion”, the judge had made “a number of errors of principle which undermine his decision.”:

(from the press summary:)

  • “The provision of accommodation for asylum seekers pursuant to the Home Secretary’s statutory duty is a national issue requiring a structured response. Ad hoc interim injunction applications seeking closure of particular sites may each have some individual merit, but the judge’s approach ignores the obvious consequence that closure of one site means that capacity needs to be identified elsewhere in the system, and may incentivise local planning authorities who wish to remove asylum accommodation from their area to apply to the court urgently before capacity elsewhere in the system becomes exhausted. The potential cumulative impact of such ad hoc applications was a material consideration within the balance of convenience, but was not considered by the judge, perhaps because he did not have the advantage in reaching his decision of evidence and submissions from the Home Office.”

Incidentally, the Court of Appeal goes on to describe as “unattractive” an argument raised by the Home Secretary as to a hierarchy of human rights with particular weight to be given to the fact that “the Home Secretary’s statutory duty is a manifestation of the UK’s obligations under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights”. Even if in Farage language the government “used ECHR”, this is no basis for the Court of Appeal’s ruling.

  • “The fact that the judge gave even limited weight to the fact of protests occurring, including unlawful protests, outside the hotel, were “worrying aspects of the judgment. If an outbreak of protests enhances the case for a planning injunction, this runs the risk of acting as an impetus or incentive for further protests, some of which may be disorderly, around asylum accommodation. At its worst, if even unlawful protests are to be treated as relevant, there is a risk of encouraging further lawlessness. The judge does not appear to have considered this risk, again perhaps because he had denied himself the advantage of hearing submissions on the merits from counsel for the Home Secretary.”

By judicial standards this again is trenchant criticism by the Court of Appeal of Eyre J’s approach.

  • Epping’s previous delays in taking any steps whatsoever:

“For much of the period of four years from 2020-2024 Somani had been running the Hotel as accommodation for asylum seekers without enforcement action from the Council.  When, in 2023, Somani sought planning consent to change its use, for over a year Epping did not process the application, notwithstanding the statutory duty upon it to do so within eight weeks.   The Council was aware by February 2025 that the Hotel was once again to be used to house asylum seekers, and by its letter of 15 May 2025 Somani made clear that it had been advised by the Home Office that a planning application was unnecessary.

The Council took no steps in response to this letter whether by issuing an enforcement notice or otherwise.  There was no threat of court proceedings.

Somani was first made aware of any step of this kind when it received the court papers and a court bundle running to over 1600 pages together with a detailed skeleton argument prepared by leading and junior counsel.  The tactics used on the Council’s behalf in this regard were not only procedurally unfair to Somani,  but ought to have reinforced the argument that the delay was a significant factor in the balance against the grant of interim relief.”

  • The hotel’s actions were wrongly characterised as “deliberate”:

“The judge found as a fact that Somani had acted “deliberately” in declining to seek change of use permission under planning law after April 2025; he was critical of them for taking this line.  He was wrong in both respects.  Those undeserved criticisms (which were repeated several times in the judgment) plainly played a material part in the judge’s ultimate decision. If the Council had considered Somani to be in breach of planning laws, it could have taken enforcement measures provided for within the 1990 Act.  It did not do so.  In short, the judge’s exercise of discretion in this case was seriously flawed by his erroneous reliance on the “deliberate breach” as a significant factor in favour of the grant of an interim injunction.”

  • The temporary nature of the injunction

“We emphasise here, as we did at the outset, that the issue for the judge in August was whether to grant a temporary injunction until the trial in October.  The judge appears to have given very little weight to the desirability of preserving the status quo until that point.  The risk of injustice to the residents of the Hotel by being dispersed by 12 September, when the trial of the claim was to take place only some six weeks later, seems to have had oddly little resonance with the judge.”

What now?

We now await the full hearing of the case in mid-October, where a central issue will be whether there is a breach of planning control in the first place. For the avoidance of doubt that question is not addressed by the Court of Appeal in its judgment – and did not need to be at this stage. Of course, it is conceivable that there will never be a full hearing if the Home Office decides no longer to use the Bell Hotel in any event.

It is inconceivable that any council would now succeed with an application for an interim injunction, save in the most extreme circumstances, ahead of a ruling following that final hearing, or a final hearing in any future case that is brought. There would be significant cost risks for any council that took that “KEEP GOING!” advice seriously.

Finally, as the court made clear, this case (like this blog post) is “not concerned with the merits of Government policy in relation to the provision of accommodation for asylum seekers, in hotels or otherwise.”

Simon Ricketts, 29 August 2025

Personal views, et cetera

Planning Law Is Being Used For Politicking About Asylum Seekers

The sheer extent of coverage, and speculation as to the implications, of Eyre J’s ruling in Epping Forest District Council v Somani Hotels Limited (19 August 2025) has a whiff of the silly season about it: the principles in the case law have not moved on substantively since my 14 January 2024 blog post Accommodating Asylum Seekers: Some Recent Planning Law Cases.

Eyre J’s judgment is a useful analysis of familiar principles. Why is it headline news then?

A whiff of the silly season but an even more pungent and worrying whiff of political opportunism – the Conservative party leader tonight (20 August 2025) encouraging all Tory-led local authorities to follow Epping Forest’s lead (despite the previous Government having set up this whole arrangement in the first place whereby hotels are block-booked by the Home Office via intermediary companies) and the Reform party leader encouraging more protests.

My personal view is that I’m not at all sure that we in the planning world should accept the planning system being used by politicians like this – whether to bash the government or to pursue largely misguided or misdirected campaigns against those who beyond doubt are vulnerable and in need. This is an issue for government to address, rather than to be fought out hotel by hotel via arguments about whether there has been a material change of use, based on old and inadequate case law. Particularly given that, if the statistics are to be believed, the use of hotels for asylum seeker accommodation is being reduced in any event and, to state the obvious, whilst the processing of asylum claims still needs to be sped up, these people need to be accommodated somewhere!

For those wanting to rely on the case, I draw attention to three key points:

This judgment is about an application for an interim injunction

The issue before Eyre J, as was the position in the Great Yarmouth and other cases mentioned in that January 2024 blog post, was whether to grant an interim injunction ahead of a full hearing of the case – and it is crucial to remember that the question of whether an interim injunction is to be ordered is down to the judge determining the “balance of convenience” on the specific facts of the particular case. Lawyers will be familiar with the American Cyanamid [1975] AC 396 test, which Eyre J summarises by reference to the later Sabmiller Africa v East African Breweries case [2009] EWHC 2140: “If the court is satisfied that there is a serious question to be tried, it must go on to consider whether the claimant would be adequately compensated in damages and whether the defendant would be in a financial position to pay them. If the answer to both of those questions is in the affirmative, no injunction should normally be granted. If not the court must consider whether the defendant would be adequately compensated under the claimants undertaking as to damages in the event of his succeeding at trial. If the answer to that question is “yes” the fact that the defendant may succeed at trial is no bar to the grant of an injunction. Where there is doubt as to the adequacy of damages for both parties the court must determine where the balance of convenience lies. If matters are evenly balanced it may be wise to take such measures as are calculated to preserve the status quo…A fundamental principle is that the court should take whatever course appears to carry the lower risk of injustice if it should turn out to have been the “wrong” course – in the sense that the court either grants an injunction which should have been refused or refuses to grant an injunction that should have been granted.”

Eyre J weighs up the factors in favour of an interim injunction at paragraphs 105 to 112 and those against at 114 to 116. The factors that weighed in favour included that the defendant hotel company had not made an application for planning permission or for a certificate of lawful use. The judge gave limited weight to “the fear of crime resulting from the use of the Bell; the need to address lawful protests; and the consequences of the actions taken to address unlawful activity.”

There is no final judgment as to whether there was a material change of use requiring planning permission

The court has expressly not reached any final judgment as to whether the accommodation of asylum seekers at the hotel amounted to a material change of use. Indeed, the council sought an interim declaration to that effect, which the court refused: “Although, as will be seen below, there is considerable force in the Claimant’s arguments that there has been a change of use the Defendant has counter-arguments which cannot simply be dismissed out of hand. In addition, as I have already explained, the question of the proper characterization of the use is fact-sensitive and for that reason alone this is not a case where an interim declaration is appropriate. Further, the second element of the proposed declaration, namely that the current use is not a permitted use, does not follow from the first element, namely that the current use is not use as a hotel. As Holgate J explained in Ipswich there will only have been development if there has not only be a change of use but if that change of use has been material. It follows that a declaration that the current use was not use as a hotel would not resolve matters and the court is not in a position at this stage to make a declaration that any change has been material.”

Eyre J does embark upon some analysis, although subject to this health warning:

“In doing so I am mindful that the case remains at the interim stage where there is limited evidence (and markedly less detailed evidence than could be expected at a final hearing and even more so than would be available if the matter were being considered at a planning appeal before an inspector); where the parties have had limited opportunity to advance detailed arguments; where the court’s opportunity for mature reflection is limited; and where the issues involve questions not only of fact but also of planning judgement.”

“There are a number of factors which operate against a finding that there has been a change of use. The principal ones are:

i) There have been no internal structural changes in the Bell.

ii) The external appearance of the Bell is unaltered – the presence of security fencing erected to address recent unlawful hostile activity is to be disregarded for these purposes.

iii) The Defendant’s staff continue to operate the facilities at the Bell and to provide the services there.

iv) Catering, cleaning, and related services are provided for those accommodated at the Bell in the same way as they previously were for hotel guests.”

There are, however, other factors which would support a finding of a change of use namely:

i)Those accommodated are all of one category of person namely single male asylum seekers.

ii) The entirety of the Bell is devoted to providing accommodation for those persons pursuant to an agreement with CTM and is to be so devoted for a significant period of time (it is the latter element which distinguishes the situation from that of a block booking of a hotel for conference or training course).

iii) Those accommodated have no choice in the location of the premises in which they are placed. They did not choose to come to the Bell and have no control over how long they are to stay there.

iv) None of those accommodated are paying for themselves.

v) Those accommodated have no choice as to their rooms nor as to those with whom they are to share. In most cases they will be sharing rooms with persons with whom they were not previously acquainted.

vi) None of those accommodated in the Bell has anywhere else to live in the United Kingdom.

vii) The Defendant is required to follow the instructions of the Home Office (presumably mediated through CTM) as to the room in which and with whom the asylum seekers are to be placed. The Defendant is expressly prohibited from agreeing to any requests for an upgrade of accommodation.

viii) Those accommodated in the Bell may come and go as they please but any of them who intends to leave for more than one day must obtain prior authorisation from the Home Officer. In addition if any resident is not seen for more than one day the Defendant is required to notify CTM and the Home Office. The Defendant is also required to obtain a signature from each resident each day.

ix) Security staff and a welfare officer are present to protect the residents and to attend to their welfare needs.

x) None of the facilities of the Bell are available for use by non-residents.

In considering the strength of the Claimant’s case on this question I have had regard to Holgate J’s reminder that the Court of Appeal has said that the distinction between hotel and hostel use is a fine one. Although a fine one the distinction is a real one and I come back to the point that the question is not whether the current use is as a hostel but whether there has been a change from use as a hotel. In light of the factors I have just set out there is very considerable force in the contention that there has been such a change here. Mr Coppel’s point that “the Bell is not a hotel for those who are placed there” is a powerful one.

I turn to the question of whether such change of use as there has been was material for the relevant planning purposes. In that regard it is “relevant to consider not only the on- site but also the off-site effects of the character of the use of the land” (Holgate J in Ipswich at [69]. There are a number of factors which support the Claimant’s contention that the change was a material one:

i) The nature of the on-site operation has changed in the extensive ways I have set out above.

ii) The opportunity for use of the Bell by members of the wider community has gone. It no longer provides a resource for dining, receptions, functions, and the like. I do not overlook the fact that such use has been very markedly reduced for a number of years but any scope for such use has totally gone for the duration of the use of the Bell under the contract with CTM.

iii) In addition, it is at least arguable that the contribution which those currently resident at the Bell can make to the local community will be different from that which could have been made by visitors to a hotel. Those currently resident there are all single males who will be resident for a significant period of time; who are resident there without choice; and who ex hypothesi are destitute or at risk of destitution (otherwise the Secretary of State would not be under a duty to accommodate them). Through no fault of theirs the contribution they can make (particularly in the form of the use of local services) and the role they can play in the community is different from that of those visiting a hotel in a particular place for business or leisure purposes.

I remind myself of the limitations of the material before me and of the need for considerable caution in making an assessment of the prospects at the interim stage. Nonetheless, the strength of the Claimant’s contention that there has been a material change of use is such that it operates as a factor in favour of the grant of an injunction in assessing where the balance of convenience falls.”

Each case is to be approached on its own facts

“… the outcome of this application turns on technical issues about the rules of Planning law and on the application of the established principles governing the circumstances in which a court should grant or refuse interim relief. It will be seen from the analysis I set out below that the application of those rules and principles to particular circumstances is acutely fact sensitive.”

The hotel and the Home Office (which sought to participate in this case at a late stage) are reportedly applying for permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal.

Will we now see other local planning authorities seeking to take similar action? Politics, politics. Will they succeed? Whether or not Eyre J’s interim injunction is allowed to stand, we still await the final High Court ruling later this year (assuming the case does not become academic in the meantime).

Simon Ricketts, 20 August 2025

Personal Views, et cetera

Accommodating Asylum Seekers: Some Recent Planning Law Cases

The scale of the current crisis as to where and how to provide accommodation for asylum seekers can be viewed through a succession of High Court planning law cases over the last year or so. This blog post simply seeks to gather the cases in one place.

For context, there is much useful detail in a House of Commons Library research briefing, Asylum accommodation: hotels, vessels and large-scale sites.

Or here is how Thornton J pithily summarises the position in the most recent case (R (Clarke-Holland and West Lindsey District Council) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Thornton J, 6 December 2023)):

“Since the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of asylum seekers requiring accommodation has reached unprecedented levels. The time taken by the Home Office to process asylum applications has slowed. The Home Office had for some time been “block booking” hotel accommodation for use by asylum seekers, a system by which hotel rooms are booked and paid for, usually at preferential rates, whether or not the rooms are in fact used. In October and November 2022, a “processing facility” at Manston became overcrowded. After the overcrowding at Manston, and in light of the increasing pressure on accommodation, the Home Office started to “spot book” hotels to accommodate the overflow. Spot bookings can be released without payment if they are not needed. This approach was controversial with the local authorities in whose areas the hotels were being booked and, in some cases, they sought injunctions to prevent the use of hotels for that purpose. Spot booking was intended as a short-term solution, but the absence of suitable alternative accommodation has led to the continued use of hotels booked in that way.

As a result of the strains on the asylum system, in January 2023, the Home Office approached the Ministry of Defence and other government departments enquiring about availability of Crown Estate assets which could be made suitable in the short term to assist with accommodating asylum seekers.”

One of the main issues which has come to the fore is whether planning permission required to house asylum seekers in hotels. Indeed this is the specific topic covered in a 17 February 2023 House of Commons Library insight paper .

In planning law, sometimes the easiest questions are the hardest, such as: is there a material change of use? We all know that difficulties particularly arise in relation to the use of properties for sleeping accommodation: for instance, where the boundary lines lie between dwellings, co-living developments, student accommodation, elderly living, hotels, hostels and emergency accommodation for those in need whether through homelessness or asylum seeking. I blogged about some of these issues way back in my 1 July 2016 blog post Time To Review The “C” Use Classes?

Since that House of Commons paper, whilst the issue has arisen in various applications by local planning authorities for injunctions to prevent such use, there has been no final determination of the issue. In fact, the lesson to draw from the (I think) only case where an injunction has been upheld, Great Yarmouth Borough Council v Al-Abdin (Holgate J, 21 December 2022), is that the question is specific to the relevant facts, circumstances and policy position in every case. In Great Yarmouth Holgate J upheld an application for the continuation of an interim injunction “restraining the defendants from using or facilitating the use of the Villa Rose Hotel, 30-31 Princes Road, Great Yarmouth, or any other hotel within an area protected by Policy GY6 of the Great Yarmouth Local Plan Part 2, adopted  in December 2021, as a hostel, whether for the accommodation of asylum seekers or at all.”

Holgate J did not need to reach a final conclusion as to whether the use of the hotel was in breach of planning control, but simply had to determine by applying the “balance of convenience” test whether the injunction should continue in effect. However, he did state the following:

“Planning considerations are to do with the character of the use of land.  It is common ground that the policies of the development plan may be relevant to that issue.  See, for example, Wilson v West Sussex County Council [1963] 2 QB 764, 785.  In my judgment Policy GY6 is certainly relevant.  It is aimed at protecting a substantial part of the local economy of the borough dependent on tourism. That, in turn, is said to depend upon a collection of tourist facilities, including hotel accommodation.”

“There are some factors pointing against a hostel use.  Proposed use would involve no alteration of the premises and in many ways the operation of the premises would be similar to that carried out ordinarily by hotel operators. There would be no dormitories and it is not suggested the accommodation is basic or inexpensive.

On the other hand, there are factors pointing to a hostel use.  In this case, unlike others, the Council is aware of how the premises would be used.  In part this is based upon their experience of the use of the Victoria Hotel.  The premises would be block-booked for a substantial period of time, solely for occupation by people belonging to one cohort, asylum seekers, having nowhere else to live.  In addition, as Mr Glason points out, there would be a degree of management of movement of the residents.  They are not supposed to be absent for more than three days. The duration of their transient occupation would be determined by their move to the next stage of the asylum process.  The accommodation would be paid for ultimately by the Home Office.   As I have said, the location of the hotel within the Seafront Area in Policy GY6 is important.  The claimant may rely upon that policy as a factor indicating that there would be a breach of planning control.

I have already referred to the increase in the 21-day average stay to something of the order of 26 weeks. There is no suggestion that that period is likely to decrease.  The hotel would be closed to public bookings both as regards accommodation and the restaurant.  There would be little or no expenditure by asylum seekers in the town.  It strikes me that that is a highly relevant factor.  They would not contribute to the local economy.  Policy GY6 resists hostel use for what have been judged to be sound planning and economic reasons.  This is a policy which is highly specific.  It does not, for example, cover the whole of the borough or the whole of the town.  Instead, it is targeted at the most important part of the town for tourism.   It applies to a carefully defined strip of land closely related to the major tourist attractions.

At the end of the day whether a material change of use would occur is a question of fact and degree, but in my judgment the particular policy considerations raised in this case by Policy GY6 strengthen the Council’s case on breach of planning control significantly.”

There are two important specific points to bear in mind with this ruling:

First, the relevant local plan policy:

“In my judgment, GY6 is a highly specific, protective policy directed to a large and highly important sector of the Borough’s economy. Mr Glason provides helpful context for the policy.   In 2019 the annual value of tourism to Great Yarmouth was around £648 million, supporting around 9,600 full-time tourism jobs and 13,000 tourism-related jobs, representing 37 per cent of total employment within the Borough. A recent economic report indicates that accommodation and food services is likely to be the second largest growth sector in the Borough after government services.”

Secondly, there had already been an enforcement notice in relation to change of use from the hotel to use as a house in multiple occupation, which does not appear to have been subject to any appeal. The judge considered that accordingly, “the present case is one where the apprehended breach of planning control has a flagrant character. “

The case is to be contrasted with earlier cases where Holgate J refused equivalent applications:

First, in Ipswich Borough Council v Fairview Hotels (Ipswich) Ltd v Serco Ltd and East Riding of Yorkshire Council v LGH Hotels Management Limited (Holgate J, 11 November 2022). This judgment contains, at paragraphs 72 to 83, useful analysis as to the distinctions between a hotel and a hostel in planning law terms. At paragraph 101 he states that the “distinction between hotel and hostel use in a case of the present kind is fine. There are some factors pointing against a hostel use. The proposed use involves no alteration of the premises. In many ways the operation of the Novotel would be similar to that carried out ordinarily by the hotel operators. There would be no dormitories and the accommodation could not be described as basic or inexpensive. On the other hand there are factors pointing to a hostel use. The premises would be block-booked for a substantial period of time solely for occupation by people belonging to one cohort, asylum seekers, having nowhere else to live. The duration of their transient occupation would be determined by their move to the next stage of the asylum process. The accommodation would be paid for ultimately by the Home Office. It is arguable that the factors pointing towards a hostel use outweigh those pointing against.

The effect of the block-booking of the whole hotel is that no accommodation is available for any member of the public. It is said that the Novotel is the largest hotel in the centre of Ipswich and that the loss of the accommodation would be damaging to the hospitality and leisure economy of the town, given its close proximity to restaurants and bars. It is arguable that this alleged harm is a planning consideration which may render a change to a hostel a material change of use and so attract planning control.”

At paragraph 110: “In each case before this court there are factors pointing for and against the proposed use being a hostel use. Even if a hostel use would be involved, the key question still remains whether it would represent a material change of use. That would depend upon the planning consequences of the change. In each case that turns upon the planning harm identified by the claimant.”

Secondly, in Fenland District Council v CBPRP Limited (Holgate J, 25 November 2022) which related to the use of a hotel in Wisbech, Lincolnshire. Holgate J refers back to his analysis in Ipswich.

Am injunction was similarly not upheld in The Council of the City of Stoke-on-Trent v Britannia Hotels Limited (Linden J, 2 November 2022) (I don’t have a link to that judgment I’m afraid).

An injunction was also not upheld in relation to the use of the Stradey Park Hotel in Llanelli. On 7 July 2023, Gavin Mansfield KC, sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge, dismissed an application by Carmarthenshire County Council for an injunction prohibiting the use of the hotel for housing asylum seekers.

In subsequent proceedings, Roger ter Haar KC , sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge,  granted an injunction to restrain unlawful protest activity against the use of the hotel for those purposes. (Again, no links to these judgments I’m afraid).

And, indeed, the Planning Court has also been kept busy on the wider issues arising.

In R (Parkes) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Holgate J, 11 October 2023), Holgate J rejected an application for judicial review that sought to establish that the Home Office’s proposed use of the Bibby Stockholm barge, moored in Portland Harbour, for the accommodation of asylum seekers, was unlawful, in part, it was submitted, because planning permission would be needed for such use. As a matter of principle the judge considered that the claim was misconceived: it was for the local planning authority in the first instance to determine whether the proposed use was in breach of planning permission and whether it would be expedient to enforce against any breach. But in any event the barge was below the low water mark and therefore beyond the scope of planning control.

In R (Clarke-Holland and West Lindsey District Council) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Thornton J, 6 December 2023) (which followed a related judgment of the Court of Appeal on 23 June 2023 which held that section 296A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 was a statutory bar to an injunction being upheld against the Government in the case), Thornton J rejected applications for judicial review brought seeking to challenge the lawfulness of the Home Office’s reliance on class Q of the General Permitted Development Order allowing development on Crown land in an emergency in connection with the proposed use of RAF Wethersfield in Essex and RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire for the accommodation of asylum seekers.

I usually end with some flippant closing comments but not today. Behind each case lies much human misery.

Simon Ricketts, 14 January 2024

Personal views, et cetera

Extract from photograph by Marcus Spiske courtesy of Unsplash