Town halls have been “paralysed” by Labour dumping its asylum accommodation nightmare on communities across the country, ministers have been warned.

Sir Keir Starmer’s Government was accused of creating “confusion” and “chaos” by failing to give councils new planning guidance on whether permission is required to convert houses or hotels into asylum accommodation.

The issue was brutally exposed in the legal battle over The Bell Hotel in Epping, with the hotel’s owners arguing they did not need consent to use the rooms to house Channel migrants.

The Court of Appeal overturned a High Court injunction ordering the closure of the hotel for breaching planning laws.

And Labour faces accusations it has “dumped the problem on judges”, leaving councils in the dark as the Home Office scrambles to close more than 200 hotels.

Shadow Housing Secretary James Cleverly said: “Labour have left councils in the dark, refusing to say whether turning a hotel or HMO into asylum accommodation even counts as a change of use.

“That failure of basic guidance has paralysed local authorities, dumped the problem on judges, and left residents paying the price.

“This Labour government has ducked every question on this, promising vaguely to end hotel use, while providing no framework for how councils are supposed to handle it in the meantime.”

Shocking Home Office figures revealed there are some 32,059 migrants living in hotels.

This is up 8% from 29,585 in the year to June 2024.

Some 66,234 asylum seekers are currently living in so called dispersal accommodation – houses, flats and bedsits.

This is up from 61,778 last year.

And fears are intensifying that Labour's bid to close migrant hotels will simply see tens of thousands of migrants transferred into communities already struggling to cope.

The Home Office’s asylum accommodation providers are said to be looking for another 5,000 properties across the country to house 20,000 people.

Housing minister Matthew Pennycock, responding to a written Parliamentary question, admitted his department “has no plans” to issue new guidance on whether converting hotels into asylum accommodation requires planning permission.

Nothing is available to councils when landlords want to convert properties into “Houses of Multiple Occupancy” either.

Mr Pennycock added: “This Government is committed to ending the use of asylum hotels by the end of this Parliament.

“But we are clear this must be done in a controlled and orderly manner. We continue to keep our approach, including in respect of planning and permitted development rights, under review.

“Whether or not use of a hotel to accommodate asylum seekers would constitute a material change of use requiring planning permission will be a matter of fact and degree for the local planning authority to determine in the first instance, depending on the individual circumstances of each case’”.

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: “In Epping, the Labour Government went to court to crush the community’s attempt to protect itself from an asylum hotel. It is disgraceful that ministers chose to fight local residents in the courtroom rather than listen to them.

“Conservatives shut down 200 hotels in the nine months before the election. If this pace had continued all the asylum hotels would have been closed by March this year.

“Instead, Labour have shut just three since taking office and the numbers of illegal immigrants in the hotels has actually gone up. Labour promised to end the use of hotels, but all they’ve delivered is confusion, chaos, and communities treated as dumping grounds.”

Military planners have been ordered to find sites for “temporary accommodation”, where asylum seekers can be transferred to from hotels.

Former student accommodation, abandoned care homes, empty tower blocks and converted houses and flats could also be used.

And former Home Secretary Yvette Cooper revealed “industrial sites” are under consideration.

Sir Keir said he was “absolutely convinced” that one of the reasons migrants travel through France to reach the UK is that it is easier to work illegally here than in other countries.

He told the BBC: “I want to reduce the number of people in asylum hotels. I want to empty those asylum hotels. I completely understand the frustration that people have in relation to the hotels. It frustrates me because what happened was we inherited tens of thousands of asylum claims which hadn’t been processed by the last government.

“You have got to process them. So, they then opened the hotels, to put people into hotels. It’s my job to empty it.

“So, what I’ve done, to do that, is to ensure that we’ve got many more people processing claims.

“Where we process claims and people are found that they’ve got no right to be here, we’re returning them to the country they came from.”

Put to him on the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme that those prepared to hire people illegally will not ask for ID, he said: “We must be really clear. You must have ID, mandatory digital ID, in order to work, because we have to stop illegal working.

“If you look at any of the raids – we’ve massively increased the number of raids on working premises – it is absolutely clear that people are working illegally.”

He said the ID scheme means there will be an “automatic collection” of information so the Government knows who is working and can better enforce existing rules.

“But there’s no point in people saying to me, ‘why do we need it?’ when we all acknowledge there is a problem,” Sir Keir said.

“People are working illegally in our economy. It is amongst the reasons that people want to come to the United Kingdom, we have to deal with that.

“I made a pledge that we would do whatever was necessary, use whatever tools were available to deal with illegal migration. I intend to do so.”

A Labour source said: "The Conservatives' introduced asylum hotels, and left us with no plans to exit them. This Labour Government will close their asylum hotels."