It started with a simple enough need. Back in 1986 a group of Ugandan-Indian refugees opened the Bharat Hindu Samaj temple on a council-owned site in Peterborough. Four decades later that modest community centre has become the sole Hindu place of worship for thousands across Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Lincolnshire and Leicestershire. Yet the council has decided to sell the Rock Road freehold to the United Kingdom Islamic Mission, which intends to turn it into a mosque and Islamic centre.
The numbers tell their own story. Roughly 14,000 Hindus rely on this one facility within a 35-mile radius. It runs a lunch club, charity outreach and the everyday social fabric that keeps any faith community knitted together. Without it, there are no alternative premises. The temple began talking to the council about some form of transfer as far back as 2017. Those talks ended with a competitive bidding process the council insists was transparent and fair.
But the temple's legal team disagrees. In claim number AC-2026-LON-000946 they argue the decision contained significant flaws in officers' reasoning later adopted by the cabinet, an unlawful delegation of the bidding process, and a failure to meet the public sector equality duty under the Equality Act 2010. The impact on the Hindu community, they say, was not properly weighed. After hearings spread across several days in June and July before Mr Justice Morris, the case wrapped up around 14 July with judgment reserved.
On 7 July the judge issued a directions order of the court's own motion to manage remote attendance at the final hearings, citing expected media and public interest. That interest was plain to see. Hindus travelled from Peterborough and further afield; the community even crowdfunded its legal costs. The proceedings themselves stretched over four tense days.
The council maintains it engaged with the temple over many years, took all material considerations into account and paid due regard to equality obligations. It says the claim lacks merit. The United Kingdom Islamic Mission sits as an interested party in the case. Yet the broader picture is harder to dismiss. A long-established minority faith institution, rooted in the experience of refugees who rebuilt their lives here, now risks being displaced in favour of another group's ambitions.
This is not abstract policy debate. It is about whether local authorities, under financial pressure to cut debts, can reallocate community assets in ways that erode the quiet continuity many faith groups have taken for granted. The public sector equality duty exists precisely to stop such decisions overlooking the needs of smaller or less vocal communities. If that duty was properly discharged here, the court will say so. If not, the sale may yet be quashed.
