Basildon Council plans housing on Dale Farm green belt

Before the eviction of the Dale Farm Travellers site at Crays Hill near Basildon, Essex, in 2011, local council leader Tony Ball said: “Dale Farm has been illegally developed on green belt land. By doing this … the Travellers have broken the law.” After the eviction Cllr Ball thanked Inspector Knacker and bailiffs and promised to restore the site in keeping with its green belt status. This hasn’t happened. It still looks like an urban wasteland.

Basildon council’s draft local plan now suggests building up to 2,500 houses in Crays Hill – much of which is green belt. Whilst the council says the draft does not propose any development of Dale Farm itself, an eager developer is canvassing travellers who own plots on both the legal site and the illegal site which was cleared, and exploring the possibility of building homes there. The council says there are no plans to build on the legal site, and that the draft local plan proposes to safeguard it for Gypsies and Travellers, but the developer can feed into the local plan and suggest developing the site.

Any developer would have a number of obstacles to overcome, including the fact that some pitches have injunctions protecting standing gates, fences and even three lawful plots, which would need to be quashed in court, and the fact that the land is severely contaminated. If the Travellers are to feel it is worthwhile to sell their pitches (most want a minimum of £100,000) then charges against the pitches that the council have taken out to cover the cost of the eviction will need to be dropped. These range between £60,000 and £360,000 per pitch and the council says it has no plans to remove them -- yet. It is a great bargaining tool, after all.

The Travellers are well aware of the irony of the fact that they were evicted from the green belt because nobody is supposed to live on such cherished land - yet “settled” people could live there, possibly in their hundreds, in executive homes, just a few years later. One wonders what it would be called - Dale Farm Close, perhaps? But having lived in squalor for the best part of five years, they seem prepared to go quietly – if Basildon and a friendly developer are willing to help them.

By Katharine Quarmby (first published in Private Eye and republished with kind permission).

Katharine Quarmby is an author and journalist and has often contributed for The Travellers’ Times. She is a Royal Literary Fellow at the London School of Economics and Contributor at Mosaic Science magazine. No Place to Call Home, in which she investigated the relationship between Britain's settled people and Roma, Romanies and Travellers, asking why it is often so troubled - and what can be done to heal the divide, was published by Oneworld in August 2013, and shortlisted for The Bread and Roses award. In 2014 she published, with Newsweek Insights, Romani Pilgrims, an e-book about Gypsy, Roma and Traveller evangelical Christians.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Katharine-Quarmby/e/B004GH8LS6