Overview

• Interior Minister Yvette Cooper announced a new independent body to handle asylum appeals with power to prioritise cases and a 24-week decision target.
• The reforms are intended to phase out hotel accommodation for asylum seekers, currently housing about 32,000 people across roughly 200 sites.
• Protests and counter-protests were held outside hotels in dozens of towns and cities over the weekend, spreading from July’s flashpoint in Epping.
• A court has ordered the Bell Hotel in Epping to cease use for asylum housing and vacate residents by mid-September, and the government says it will appeal.
• Official figures cite 111,084 asylum applications in the year to June and an appeals backlog of about 106,000 cases, as Reform UK and Nigel Farage push hardline deportation and detention plans.