Overview

• The Home Office says at least five more asylum hotels will shut by year-end with a “big surge” in closures in the new year, down from about 400 hotels in 2023 to just over 200 now and daily costs reduced to about £5.5m.
• Ministers announced a fast-track appeals overhaul, replacing tribunal judges with professionally trained adjudicators to process roughly 51,000 outstanding appeals that currently take more than a year on average.
• Protests outside hotels housing asylum seekers continued across multiple towns and cities over the weekend, prompting police interventions and several arrests.
• A High Court injunction ordering the removal of asylum seekers from the Bell Hotel in Epping remains in force as the government prepares an appeal, and other councils are weighing similar legal routes.
• Political pressure is rising as Reform UK prepares to outline mass-deportation plans and withdrawal from the ECHR, while The Times reports more than 100 small-boat arrivals could be returned to France within weeks under the one-in, one-out deal.