The Home Office has been banned from accommodating lone asylum seeker children in hotels apart from for very short periods “in true emergency situations” after a long-running high court case.

The home secretary’s practice of routinely and systematically accommodating these children in hotels has been ruled unlawful in an order finalised on Thursday. The order states that since December 2021 this practice has “exceeded the proper limits of his powers”.

Some of the children placed in hotels have been as young as 12 and many had recently arrived in the UK after traumatic journeys across the Channel in small boats.

News that children were being placed in hotels where some subsequently went missing, many within 72 hours of arriving in the UK, with some falling into the hands of traffickers, was revealed in the Observer in January this year.