"This Temple Means Everything": Peterborough's 40-Year-Old Hindu Temple Wins First Round in High Court

Peterborough / London: A Hindu temple in Peterborough built by families expelled from Uganda under dictator Idi Amin has won the first round of a High Court legal battle to prevent its eviction, after a Labour-controlled city council sold the site it has occupied for nearly four decades to an Islamic mission organisation that plans to build a mosque and community centre in its place.

Mr Justice Fordham, sitting in the High Court, granted a temporary injunction against the sale on July 16, 2026, pausing the transaction while both sides set out their cases in writing. The order gives the Bharat Hindu Samaj, the Hindu community organisation that has leased the New England Complex in Peterborough since 1986, a breathing space in which to mount a formal judicial review challenge to the council's decision to sell the building to the Khadijah Mosque, which is part of the United Kingdom Islamic Mission.

The injunction is a preliminary order, not a final ruling on the merits. Peterborough City Council issued a statement acknowledging the legal action and confirming it would engage in the legal process. The case now moves to a full hearing at which the temple's legal team will argue the council's decision to sell the site was unlawful, in breach of public equality duties, and procedurally flawed.

Who Is the Bharat Hindu Samaj and What Is the New England Complex

The Bharat Hindu Samaj is not simply a place of worship. It is, for an estimated 14,000 Hindu worshippers across Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Lincolnshire, and Leicestershire, the only Hindu temple within approximately 35 miles of Peterborough. It was established in 1986 by Indian families expelled from Uganda in 1972 under the diktat of President Idi Amin Dada, who gave the Asian community 90 days to leave the country. Most of those families had lived in Uganda for generations, building businesses, hospitals, and schools. They arrived in Britain with almost nothing and rebuilt their lives in cities including Leicester, Coventry, and Peterborough.

"This temple means everything to me," Damyanti Bathia, 74, told The Telegraph. "For prayer, for meeting each other, it's very important. I've been coming here since it opened. My children come, and my grandchildren come."

For Peterborough's Hindu community, the parallel between Idi Amin's 1972 expulsion order and the threat of eviction from their temple in 2026 is not merely rhetorical. "We were once driven out of Uganda with nothing," one worshipper told The Telegraph. "We built something here, and now we're being asked to give it up again. We cannot let that happen."

The New England Complex, where the temple is located, houses not only the shrine itself but a community centre that provides yoga classes, language lessons, sports clubs, health programmes, and activities for senior citizens. The temple serves as the cultural and social anchor for a diaspora community spread across several counties.

How the Sale Happened: A Decade of Negotiation, Then a Shock Decision

The dispute has its roots in Peterborough City Council's acute financial crisis. The council is carrying approximately £500 million in debt, a figure that has placed it under severe budget pressure and led to a programme of asset sales designed to reduce its liabilities. The New England Complex was identified as a sellable asset.

What makes the case legally and morally contested is not that the council chose to sell an asset, it is how the sale was conducted in relation to the sitting tenant.

The Bharat Hindu Samaj has been leasing Unit 6 of the New England Complex since 1986. Trustee Gauri Chaudhary told media that the community had been negotiating with the council to purchase the building for over a decade, since at least 2011 and that when the council indicated it was willing to sell, the temple submitted a bid of £1.3 million. However, the council did not respond to that offer for several months, and rather than concluding a sale with the sitting tenant, it instead placed the building on the open market.

In the competitive bidding process that followed, the United Kingdom Islamic Mission, the organisation that operates the Khadijah Mosque, submitted a bid of £1.4 million, approximately £100,000 above the temple's offer, together with proof of £5.4 million in available cash. The temple had separately attributed approximately £504,000 in "social value" to its community service contributions, a valuation the council's formal process did not appear to have weighted equally against the higher cash offer.

The council's cabinet selected UKIM as the preferred buyer and formally agreed to the sale on February 10, 2026, despite the Bharat Hindu Samaj being a sitting tenant. The decision was subsequently "called in", a procedural mechanism under local government law that allows scrutiny committees to challenge executive decisions and sent back to the cabinet, which met again and reconfirmed the sale. The council's Labour cabinet member for finance, Mohammed Jamil, stated that the council had offered to work with the Hindu community to find alternative premises.

The Legal Challenge: Judicial Review and Equality Duties

The Bharat Hindu Samaj's legal team has filed for a judicial review of the council's decision, making two principal arguments.

The first is that the council's sale process was procedurally flawed. The temple trustees maintain that they believed a purchase price had been agreed upon and that the council's subsequent decision to go to the open market without completing that negotiation was a breach of the legitimate expectations it had created. Legitimate expectation is a well-established doctrine in English administrative law, it holds that a public authority that has made representations to an individual or organisation, upon which that party has reasonably relied, cannot depart from those representations without giving the party the opportunity to make representations and without demonstrating that the public interest justifies the departure.

The second is that the council breached its public sector equality duty under Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010. The public sector equality duty requires public bodies to have due regard, in exercising their functions, to the need to eliminate discrimination and to advance equality of opportunity. The temple's legal team argues that the decision to sell the site of the only Hindu temple within 35 miles, displacing 14,000 Hindu worshippers, many of them elderly, from a community centre they have relied upon for 40 years, without adequate consideration of the equality implications constitutes a breach of that duty.

The equality duty argument is the more legally adventurous of the two. Courts have consistently held that the duty to have "due regard" does not impose a substantive requirement to reach any particular outcome, only a procedural requirement that equality implications are genuinely and consciously considered. The question for the court will be whether the council's decision-making process shows evidence that it gave adequate, informed, and genuine consideration to the impact of the sale on the Hindu community before making its final decision.

The council has publicly denied the sale was unlawful, and its cabinet has confirmed the decision twice, first in December 2025 and again after the call-in, suggesting it believes its process was legally sound.

What the UKIM Plans for the Site

The United Kingdom Islamic Mission, which operates the Khadijah Mosque as one of its member institutions, has indicated it intends to redevelop the New England Complex into a larger "unity centre" and mosque. The UKIM's current mosque has, according to sources familiar with the matter, grown beyond the capacity of its existing space. The higher bid of £1.4 million, backed by demonstrated cash reserves of £5.4 million, reflected the organisation's financial capacity to complete the purchase and undertake redevelopment.

Local community organisations including some Muslim community representatives, have been careful to stress that the dispute should not be framed as one faith community against another. The legal challenge is directed at the council's process, not at the UKIM's plans or the mosque community's legitimate need for expanded premises.

A council spokesperson stated that it is exploring alternative premises for the Bharat Hindu Samaj and has assured worshippers that the community "will not be left without a home." Peterborough City Councillor Gul Nawaz Khan, who leads the Labour group on the council, stated: "Peterborough is a diverse city and the council will work with the Hindu community to identify alternative premises."

Bharat Hindu Samaj's vice-president Ekta Patel, responding to these assurances, said the community had "left no stones unturned and knocked on all doors to save it" and felt "disgruntled" by the process. Trustee Kishore Ladwa said: "Bharat Hindu Samaj is not just a place of worship but our home."

The High Court's Temporary Injunction: What It Does and Does Not Mean

Mr Justice Fordham's order granting a temporary injunction pauses the sale process while the judicial review proceeds. It does not determine the merits of the case. In granting interim relief, a court applies the standard set out in the House of Lords' American Cyanamid principles, broadly, whether there is a serious issue to be tried, where the balance of convenience lies, and whether damages would be an adequate remedy if no injunction were granted.

The grant of the injunction signals that Mr Justice Fordham found a serious issue to be tried, that the temple's legal arguments are not obviously without merit. It does not mean the court has concluded the sale was unlawful. The full judicial review, at which both sides present their evidence and arguments in writing and at a hearing, will determine that question.

The case is expected to be of wider significance. As one legal analysis of the dispute noted, the outcome will set a critical legal precedent for how councils across the United Kingdom must balance their financial obligations against the social and religious rights of their residents when disposing of assets occupied by long-standing community organisations. With hundreds of councils across England facing severe budget pressures and actively selling assets, the legal principles that emerge from Peterborough's case will have direct implications for dozens of similar situations now being navigated across the country.