00:00At a hearing on Thursday, barristers for Epping Forest District Council told the Court of Appeal that there was a
00:07compelling reason for the challenge to proceed and that the judge's decision was wrong.
00:12Barristers for Somani Hotels and the Home Office, which is intervening in the case, opposed the appeal bid, with lawyers
00:19for the department claiming that the council was doing an unjustified disservice to the judge's comprehensive analysis of the law.
00:26A previous hearing was told that the bell was used to house asylum seekers from May 2020 to March 2021
00:34and accommodated single adult males from October 2022 to April 2024, with the council taking no enforcement action.
00:43It was then used for a third time and became the focal point of several protests and counter-protests last
00:49summer, after an asylum seeker housed there was charged with sexually assaulting a teenage girl in Epping in July.
00:57Epping Council successfully sought a temporary injunction blocking the use of the site last August, claiming that the use of
01:05the site was a breach of planning rules.
01:07However, this was overturned by the Court of Appeal, which found the decision to be seriously flawed in principle.
01:14Mr Justice Mould then dismissed of the council's bid for a permanent injunction, finding that the breach of planning rules
01:21was far from being flagrant,
01:23and that it was not a case in which it is just and convenient for the court to grant an
01:29injunction.
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