← council-level findings on this theme
22 Jul 2025Essex County Council's own published papers record no full-council or cabinet motion, planning decision, licensing action or legal paper opposing asylum hotels or Home Office migrant accommodation. The only related position found at the county level was taken by a separate elected office, the Essex Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner (Roger Hirst), who told the Essex Police, Fire and Crime Panel (a joint scrutiny body of county and district councillors, meeting 22 July 2025 and reported again 25 September 2025) that he had written to the Home Office asking that the Bell Hotel in Epping cease to be used as an asylum hotel, after violent disorder outside it; the Panel simply noted this verbal update rather than adopting it as a formal Panel or Council position, and some members raised concerns about the letter and its potential knock-on effect on other asylum hotels. This episode pre-dates Reform's takeover of Essex County Council (control since 7 May 2026); no Full Council minutes published in the corpus post-date that election, so any Reform-era ECC motion is not yet captured here. The Bell Hotel itself sits in Epping Forest, a district-level planning authority outside this county-scope corpus. [1][2][3]