Enforcement notices issued to Travellers on site off Wharf Road in Wormley - Hertfordshire

From the Mercury

ENFORCEMENT notices have been issued to Travellers living on unauthorised plots in Wormley.

People living on the site have also had an illegal water supply, which ran under the nearby rail line and tapped into the mains supply, cut off.

Cllr Jim Metcalf (Con, Wormley and Turnford) welcomed the move, but said work still needed to be done.

Cllr Metcalf said: “I don’t think the process has been fully resolved.

“I think that it’s time we really began the process of resolving the issue of unauthorised camps on Wharf Road.

“I was walking down there at the weekend and I was shocked at the increase in numbers.

“More and more are coming.”

The operation took place at the Travellers’ site off Wharf Road yesterday morning.

It was co-ordinated by the Broxbourne Community Safety Partnership and involved Thames Water, Lee Valley Regional Park, Hertfordshire Police and Broxbourne Council.

The illegal water supply was installed without the permission of Thames Water.

At the same time the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority carried out works within the park area to remove the illegal pipe, while Broxbourne Council officers served planning enforcement notices on unauthorised caravan plots to the east of the railway line.

Police officers were in attendance to prevent any potential breach of the peace.

However, Traveller James Brien, who has lived at the site with his wife Mary for 12 years, said he was not sure what families at the site would do without running water.

Mr Brien said: “Families have been left with no running water.

“We don’t know what we’re going to do, they’re treating us like aliens or refugees.

“But I’m sure that if it was actually a refugee camp they would get running water.”

Lucy Dalton, revenue collections manager for Thames Water, said: “We take a very dim view of people helping themselves to our water supplies, not least because this increases our paying customers’ bills, and that’s not fair.

“Our water supplies adhere to some of the most stringent quality standards in the world.

“Hitching your own, non-sterile pipe up to our network and ignoring every safety regulation in the book presents an obvious risk to our adherence to those standards, to say nothing of the potential dangers of digging it under a railway line.”

In August, a confrontation over the water supply ended with the connection remaining in place.

Contractors arrived to shut off the supply but Travellers turned out to demonstrate against the action, causing the work to be suspended and police being called.