A Great Yarmouth seafront hotel is to stop housing asylum seekers awaiting decisions on their immigration status.
The Hotel Victoria is among 50 hotels nationally that will stop providing accommodation to asylum seekers in a new policy announced by immigration minister Robert Jenrick.
It is said the Home Office will stop using some hotels within days, with all 50 sites to have been "exited" by the end of January.
News broke last September that the hotel on King's Road was housing or would be housing up to 50 refugees.
READ MORE: Court order bans hotel asylum seeker provision
Following concerns that other Great Yarmouth hotels would be housing asylum seekers, the borough council sought and won an injunction preventing further moves to do so.
The injunction covered 59 hotels and sought to preserve the tourism character of the town.
READ MORE: Council's anger over hotel use
News that the Hotel Victoria would be among the first tranche of hotels stopped from housing asylum seekers was welcomed by the town's MP Sir Brandon Lewis, who had strongly supported the council's legal action and lobbied the government to halt hotel accommodation for asylum seekers.
Sir Brandon said: “This is a positive announcement. Great Yarmouth Conservatives led the way last year in opposing plans to use hotels to house asylum seekers in a tourist area of the town.
"Conservative councillors were courageous in launching a legal challenge by the borough council, in which they were backed by the court judge.
“However, that legal decision did not prevent the continued use of hotels outside the strictly defined tourism area.
READ MORE: MP questions asylum seeker policy
"Since then, I’ve continued to lobby government ministers to end the crazy system paying £8m a day of taxpayer’s money to fund hotel accommodation nationally that should be an asset for their local community.”
Sir Brandon said the government needed to keep processing claims efficiently and tackle the "pernicious human trafficking by the boat gangs across the English Channel".
Concerns have been raised that local authorities will now bear the brunt of the cost of housing asylum seekers.
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