Asylum seekers can continue living at an Essex hotel after a council lost a landmark legal battle to remove them at the High Court.

Epping Forest District Council sought to block migrants lodging at The Bell Hotel in Epping by arguing its owner had flouted planning rules.

Mr Justice Mould dismissed the claim on Tuesday, ruling an injunction was “not an appropriate means of enforcing planning control”.

A wave of protests were staged outside the hotel in the summer, following the arrest of an asylum seeker living there who was later jailed for sexual offences.

The judge said he accepted “the criminal behaviour of a small number of individual asylum seekers” housed at the hotel had “raised the fear of crime” among locals.

But he rejected the idea that hotel owner Somani Hotels had shown a “flagrant or persistent abuse of planning control”.