LABOUR could end the use of asylum hotels within a year with a temporary residence scheme for claimants “almost certain” to be recognised as refugees, a leading charity said today.

The Refugee Council warned that the government’s pledge to end their use by 2029 was no longer viable in the wake of the High Court ruling on the Bell Hotel in Epping.

Appealing the decision today, the Home Office warned that granting the interim injunction to Epping District council could have a “serious impact” on its ability to house vulnerable people.

The department’s director of asylum support Becca Jones told the Court of Appeal that the interim injunction would risk “encouraging other local authorities” to seek similar injunctions to prevent anti-migrant protests outside asylum hotels.

The Refugee Council called for ministers to grant “permission to stay for a limited period with full security checks” to people from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Iran, Sudan and Syria who were in the asylum system as of June 30.

Asylum-seekers from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Iran, Sudan and Syria are statistically likely to have their claims approved, with 86 per cent of Eritreans, 98 per cent of Sudanese and 61 per cent of Iranians being granted asylum at initial decision.

The charity’s chief executive Enver Solomon said: “We don’t have to wait until 2029 to end the use of asylum hotels — last week’s High Court ruling on The Bell Hotel in Epping has already proven this timeline is no longer viable.

“A targeted, ‘one-off’ scheme focusing on cases from countries with high grant rates for asylum could end the use of hotels by 2026.”

As of June 2025, 32,059 asylum-seekers were housed in hotels, with four in 10 coming from those countries. Their stays are meant to be temporary but a backlog has left asylum-seekers trapped in them for years.

The move would “cut costs, restore order and protect both refugees and the communities they live in,” Mr Solomon said.

“As long as hotels remain open, they will continue to be flashpoints for far-right activity, fuelling tensions and driving communities apart.”

But Amreen Qureshi, a research fellow with the Institute For Public Policy Research, warned that “unless the backlog itself is fixed, you risk shifting the bottleneck rather than solving it.”