Dale Farm Travellers plan 'supersite' with space for 100 new pitches on plot where taxpayers spent £7m on eviction - Essex

From the Daily Mail

Travellers cleared from Dale Farm after a lengthy legal battle have said they want to replace it with a new site more than twice the size.

They want to build more than 100 new pitches on the green belt land in Crays Hill, Essex, which they say is now contaminated anyway.

News of the plans comes just 15 months after Basildon Council and Essex Police spent £7.1m evicting around 80 families from the six-acre site.

Now the council, which had promised to restore it to greenbelt land, has been consulted by a campaigner for the Travellers on what has been dubbed a 'super site' at Dale Farm.

The new scheme would involve redeveloping all 51 demolished pitches and creating 20 temporary pitches along Oak Road where touring caravans are currently illegally parked.

There would also be 40 upgraded neighbouring legal pitches.

If approved, the site would be more than twice the size of the illegal development which stood in the town for more than a decade.

Today Basildon Council confirmed that Stuart Hardwicke-Carruthers, a campaigner for the Travellers, had made extensive enquiries into submitting the radical plan.

A council spokesman said: 'Mr Hardwicke-Carruthers has requested the council's opinion as to whether an environmental impact assessment would need to be carried out prior to the possible submission of a planning application for the proposed development of a 111-pitch Gypsy and Traveller site on land he refers to as being Dale Farm.

'It should be stressed that no planning application has been submitted.

'The council has three weeks from the submission date of the request to provide its opinion.

'The consideration of this request does not affect the planning position or Green Belt status of the land.'

Mr Hardwicke-Carruthers, who advises the Travellers' legal team, claims that concreting over the land and using it as Traveller pitches is the only viable option for the potentially-contaminated site.

He said: 'Because the land is now contaminated with hazardous substances, the most sensible option will be to cap it with a concrete base and the only real potential use becomes another Traveller site.

'This will not only deal with the environmental problems caused by the clearance, but also meet the shortage of sites in the borough.'

Tony Ball, Leader of Basildon Council, described the possible application as ‘ridiculous’.

He said: 'Given the history of this site, and the number of legal challenges and decisions that have been made regarding Dale Farm, I find it ridiculous that Mr Carruthers could even consider submitting a planning application to redevelop the land.

'I, along with many local people, find it an insult that after a decade of persistent law-breaking and significant cost to the taxpayer to uphold the law, that this is even being suggested.

'He has learnt nothing from the Dale Farm issue, and this is clearly a publicity stunt that will just waste valuable council officer time.

'The site is within the green belt, and our green belt policy is clear, as is national planning policy.

'However, there is nothing the council can do to stop an individual submitting a speculative application whether they have a chance of implementing their plans or not.'

Neighbour Len Gridley, 54, whose house backs on to the illegal site, said: 'This is another ludicrous plan.

'There would be uproar if this got through and residents would make sure the whole council had to resign.

'Because of the amount of money spent on the eviction, to reinstate it would be madness.'

The eviction, in October 2011, involved more than 300 police officers, as well as bailiffs and council workers, and some of the residents had to be forcibly removed.

Many of the Travellers who were evicted from the site in 2011 simply moved to a temporary camp 100 yards away.

Basildon Council promised to turn the site back into greenbelt land, but more than a year on it appears as if nothing has been done, and fly-tipped rubbish covers the site.

The results of an Environment Agency investigation into potentially dangerous pollutants - including asbestos and engine oil - allegedly dug up by council contractors during the eviction is expected within the coming weeks.

Last month Basildon Council approved an application by the Irish Traveller Movement in Britain (ITMB) for a 15-pitch site in Gardiners Lane South, just a mile away from the Dale Farm site.

see also The Sun - Fury as Gypsies plan Dale Farm comeback after £7m eviction