Judge adjourns Llanelli asylum hotel injunction bid after receiving letters from locals
A judge has adjourned a bid for an injunction to “protect” a four-star hotel earmarked for use by asylum-seekers from protesters after getting mail from people living nearby.
Gryphon Leisure – which owns the Stradey Park Hotel & Spa in Furnace, Llanelli, Dyfed – wanted Judge Roger ter Haar to impose an “urgent interim injunction” in a bid to prevent trespass and obstruction.
Judge ter Haar told a High Court hearing, at the Royal Courts of Justice complex in London, on Tuesday that he had personally received a number of messages from local residents.
The judge said there was “obviously very strong local feeling” and told lawyers that he wanted people who had emailed him to have a chance to attend court and make submissions.
He said lawyers representing the hotel owners should also have a chance to consider residents’ views – and that he aimed to reconsider the case on Thursday.
“I have received a number of emails from local residents,” said Judge ter Haar.
“There is obviously very strong local feeling about the use of the hotel as proposed.”
He added: “The local residents who have written to me are articulate and know about the local concerns.”
Lawyers representing Gryphon had told him that protesters were “opposed” to asylum seekers being “temporarily housed” at the hotel.
They said “protest activity” had begun in early June and told the judge that protesters had held signs displaying “racist and offensive” slogans and waved Union and Welsh flags.
Disruptive
Barrister Jenny Wigley KC, who led Gryphon’s legal team, told the judge the firm wanted an “urgent interim injunction” to “protect” the hotel from the “actions” of protesters “opposed to asylum seekers being temporarily housed there”.
“Disruptive protest activity began in the entrance to the hotel in early June,” said Ms Wigley.
“Protesters dumped very large rocks by tractor in the access way.”
She added: “A metal fence was erected, entirely blocking access.”
Ms Wigley said some protesters held signs displaying “racist and offensive” slogans and waved Union and Welsh flags.
She said protest activity meant it had not been possible to use the hotel as accommodation for asylum seekers.
In early July, Carmarthenshire County Council lost a bid for a High Court injunction to temporarily block plans to use the hotel to accommodate asylum seekers.
The council argued that proposals to house up to 241 people at the 77-bed site, which hosted “major stars” from TV and film, represented a “material change of use from a hotel to a hostel” and would be a “breach of planning control”.
A judge dismissed the council’s bid at a High Court hearing in London.
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Idiots!! We don’t hear a peep off these cretins when the English come to live here. Last figures on English people born in England, and living now in Cymru. It is near 700,000. That is the problem, not these poor desperate. people. The lady with the union Flag says it all really.
I wouldn’t be surprised that many of them are either colonists, offspring of colonists, or those who cowtow to colonists. Highly ironic.
Agree with you Paul, they have been waving Union Flags as well as singing Yma O Hyd
Back in 2016 French people said they had stopped singing their national anthem because it had become owned by the right of their country.
There’s been a lot of love for Welsh songs recently and I hope they don’t get lost the same way. Wales has always tried to be a welcoming place.
They are illegal immigrants, not asylum seekers if they were the latter they would have sought asylum in the first safe country
Not the same, Rhod, not the same. There is only one Nation Of Sanctuary!
You have no idea what intentions these people have and neither does anyone else until they’ve been through the asylum process. Asylum seeker = person who has claimed asylum. Refugees/humanitarian protection = people who are owed duty of care. Majority of asylum seekers are found to fall into one of those two brackets, which means they always had that latter status. Safety means different things to different people. It’s not a good system to have people travel so far and argument that other European nations are unsafe starts to shake at foundations but surely no one country should take all… Read more »
Personally, I can’t understand why so many Welsh people support the DU either, but they do, and their views should be respected as much as ours.
Just because someone waves the DU flag doesn’t automaticaly mean that they are Sais.
Is there a side in this who recognise that placing a relatively large number of asylum seekers in a small community without properly funding that community to look after them fails both the asylum seekers and the community, while also generally supporting people’s right to claim asylum? Or am I faced with either backing protestors, some of which are racist, or the process which has seen hotel lost and local jobs lost? I understand that there aren’t asylum seekers living there yet and therefore hope the protestors adjust their behaviour to be calmer and more friendly if/when the displaced people… Read more »
Why is someone waving a UK flag when its that very government causing this so called issue for them?
It is unfortunate that a decision was made without consultation by the Home Office. For the community of Furnace and LLanelli. This has been compounded by the far right of Farage, UKiP, Reform and others high-jacking the campaign, Colin Jones creating a closed Facebook page now called SOSPAN controlling the narrative and fuelling the vile prejudices. Isolating moderate members of the public. The Black lives mater rising to the Jocelyn of the bullies. This playing into the hands of the State, of divide and rule. LLanelli has a tradition of welcoming those in need, It was jokingly named LLaneski due… Read more »
Please do not take my message below as an anti-english one. It was meant to show that people have not made complaints when people have come here from over the border. Wales is a welcoming place, and there is no place for bigotry.