Is This The End Of Asylum Seeker Hotels?
Newscast
BBC
4.4 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 20 August 2025
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today, more councils across England say they could take legal action, after the High Court issued a temporary injunction to stop the government from housing asylum seekers at The Bell Hotel in Epping.
Anti-migrant protests and counter protests have been taking place in Epping throughout the summer after an asylum seeker living at the hotel was charged with sexual assault.
Adam is joined by Dominic Casciani, the BBC’s home affairs correspondent, and Joe Pike, political correspondent, to discuss the fallout from the ruling, the response from Reform and Conservative politicians, and what it mean’s for the government’s ability to house asylum seekers.
Plus, chief economics correspondent, Dharshini David joins Adam to talk about inflation, which rose to 3.8% in July.
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New episodes released every day. If you're in the UK, for more News and Current Affairs podcasts from the BBC, listen on BBC Sounds: https://bit.ly/3ENLcS1 Newscast brings you daily analysis of the latest political news stories from the BBC. It was presented by Adam Fleming. It was made by Chris Flynn with Kris Jalowiecki and Anna Harris. The social producers were Grace Braddock and Sophie Millward. The technical producer was Michael Regaard. The assistant editor is Chris Gray. The senior news editor is Sam Bonham.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello there. All summer, this has been happening outside the Bell Hotel in Epping in Essex, which is housing asylum seekers while they are waiting for their claims to be processed. |
| 0:14.4 | Save our kids. Save our kids. Refugees are welcome here. Say it loud, say it clear. Refugees are welcome here. |
| 0:22.8 | Say it loud, say it clear. |
| 0:24.3 | Refugees are welcome. So that's the initial protests against the asylum seekers being there. |
| 0:28.1 | And then the counter protests who protest against the initial protests. |
| 0:32.2 | But all of that was taken into account in quite a big way by a judge who on Tuesday ruled that basically using that |
| 0:40.4 | hotel in this way was a breach of planning laws. And so those asylum seekers will have to be |
| 0:45.3 | housed somewhere else, which is headache for the government. And there could be future headaches |
| 0:49.5 | coming because lots of other councils across the UK are saying they're now going to try and |
| 0:54.1 | pursue the same kind of legal avenue as Epping Forest Council has done in this case. |
| 1:00.0 | What does it all mean? We'll discuss on this episode of Newscast. |
| 1:03.5 | Newscast from the BBC. |
| 1:05.8 | He has just compared me to the fat controller. |
| 1:08.8 | Did I say that? I can't believe I said that. Next question. This is R for the benefit of Earth. I'm not personally a huge Sabrina carpenter fan. I don't think I'm being rude. I like landscapes. Take me down to Downey Street. Let's go have a tour. Blimey. Hello, it's Adam in the BBC HQ in Salford in the northwest of England, where I've |
| 1:30.1 | been standing in for Matt Chorley on Five Live, but I'm still here to do newscast, and later |
| 1:34.9 | on I'll be joined by Darshini David, where we'll talk about the inflation figures, figures |
| 1:39.3 | for inflation which are quite high, but also have quite a lot of interesting little wrinkles in |
| 1:43.9 | them, |
| 1:49.2 | so it's worth diving into the data. But in the first half of this episode, we're going to talk about that legal ruling that says the Bell Hotel in Epping in Essex can no longer be used, |
| 1:55.1 | or at least temporarily cannot be used, to house asylum seekers. What are the knock-on effects of this for the political system in general? |
| 2:03.2 | Because all the parties are jumping on it in various different ways. |
| 2:06.5 | And also just logistically, what does it mean for the Home Office? |
... |
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