A Conservative motion calling for Rotherham Council to consider seeking an injunction against the future use of local hotels to house asylum seekers has been voted down.

The group argued that residents were being “imposed upon” by hotel accommodation without consultation. They cited hotels across Rotherham as examples, and pointed to a High Court case in Epping Forest where a Conservative-run authority challenged the Home Office.

The debate took place at a full council meeting on 10 September. The motion proposed that the Labour-run authority should consider legal action “should this be proposed before the legality of this use is determined”.

Introducing the motion, Councillor Zachary Collingham said local people were “paying the price” for decisions imposed without warning or consultation. “This motion is not about turning our backs on people fleeing persecution,” he said. “It is about the fact that putting them in hotels first across the towns and villages of this country is not the way to do it.”

The group argued that residents were being “imposed upon” by hotel accommodation without consultation

placeholder image — The group argued that residents were being “imposed upon” by hotel accommodation without consultation

Councillor Simon Ball added that residents were entitled to know who was being housed locally. “I’d like to just know if it’s safe for my family. I don’t mind having asylum seekers in there, but I’d just like to know that we are safe as a community,” he told the chamber. “I’d like to protect the people that I represent, because I don’t know who these people are.”

But Labour, Liberal Democrat and Independent councillors said the Conservative government had itself expanded the use of hotels since 2020, and accused the group of scaremongering.

Independent councillor Taiba Yasseen said it was “the Conservatives who broke the asylum system”, adding that councils had been bypassed by policy under successive governments.

Council leader Chris Read warned that the Tory motion risked “ramping up rhetoric” about people arriving in “bigger numbers” and “threatening” local communities, saying the council had always argued for a more humane, national system of dispersal.

Several councillors linked the debate to far-right activity. Labour councillor Rachel Hughes said the issue had been exploited by agitators, referencing violent disorder outside the Holiday Inn in Manvers last year. “We need to resist the rhetoric that because these people are all single men, that means somehow they are trouble causers,” she said.

Others focused on the tone of the discussion. Coun Michael Bennett-Sylvester said the political right was “looking to trade off fear and anger”, while Labour’s Denise Lelliott argued it was wrong to suggest asylum seekers posed more danger than local residents. “Some of the worst offenders I know are homegrown… not people fleeing for their lives,” she said.

Liberal Democrat councillor Adam Carter also raised the case of Afghan translators who had worked with British forces, saying it would be wrong to turn them away.

The motion was rejected, winning support only from the Conservative group and the council’s sole Reform councillor.