Council considers legal action over asylum hotels

Senior councillors in Coventry have written a letter to the home secretary

Coventry City Council is considering taking legal action against the Home Office over the use of hotels to house asylum seekers in the city.

The government started using a hotel in Coventry as short-term accommodation for asylum seekers last week.

The Labour-run local authority said the hotel had been reserved for this purpose with only 48 hours' notice and no prior consultation.

The BBC has approached the Home Office for a comment.

Senior councillors have written to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper to raise concerns about the government’s approach to housing asylum seekers.

The letter, shared with the BBC, said the hotel decision was "made unilaterally" and the council was "informed after the fact".

"This is completely unacceptable," the letter said, signed by council leader George Duggins and Naeem Akhtar, cabinet member for housing and communities.

The letter urges the the Home Office to "halt any further increases of such placements in Coventry" and use a "more equitable" model for deciding where asylum seekers are placed.

It concludes by saying the council is "considering legal action but would wish to give you the opportunity to understand the position and seek to remedy the situation".

In 2021, Coventry City Council and six other local authorities in the West Midlands took legal action against the Home Office over its asylum-seeker dispersal policy.

The policy involves moving asylum seekers to different council areas across the country to help spread the cost of supporting them.

But the legal action, known as a judicial review, was withdrawn after the Home Office promised "a new, fairer asylum dispersal system".

Rise in hotel use

The letter has emerged after Home Office Minister Dame Angela Eagle told MPs the number of hotels being used to house asylum seekers across the UK had increased by seven since Labour's election victory.

Dame Angela said 220 hotels were currently in use, with 14 added and seven closed since July.

However, that is still some way short of the peak of more than 400 under the Conservatives.

In its general election manifesto, Labour pledged to "end asylum hotels".

Dame Angela said that remained the aim, but argued the Labour government had inherited an asylum backlog and was now processing up to 10,000 cases a month.

She said the system had "ground to a standstill" because of the previous government's attempts to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda.

The policy was scrapped when Labour took office.

In Coventry, the council was supporting 1,924 asylum seekers as of June 2024, the latest Home Office figures show.

Only four more local authority areas were supporting more - Birmingham, Hillingdon, Liverpool and Glasgow.

The figures show of the 1,924 being supported by Coventry City Council, 365 were in contingency - or short-term - accommodation.

The council's letter to the home secretary said Coventry was given an allocation of 782 asylum seekers in a revised accommodation plan.

We reported this week that Labour councillor Richard Brown had told residents about the Home Office's decision to use a hotel in Coventry.

The BBC has decided not to name the hotel, but it is known locally.

Council sources said at the moment they don't expect additional hotels in the city to be used for this purpose.

"We want to help as much as we possibly can," Brown told the BBC. "We're happy to keep doing that if the dispersal is on a fair and equitable basis.

"We don’t think this is happening at the moment.

"It's being unilaterally imposed. Therefore, we've written to the Home Office and the secretary of state.

"We need to explore the legal options on this."

Gary Ridley, Conservative opposition leader in Coventry, accused the Labour government of breaking its promise to end the use of hotels to house asylum seekers.

"The council should use all means at its disposal to fight this unacceptable outcome," he said.