'Eleventh hour' legal bid to halt mass eviction at Dale Farm

Published by Ross Macmillan for 24dash.com in Housing and also in Communities, Local Government

Defenders of the Dale Farm Travellers' site say they have launched an eleventh hour legal bid to halt Basildon Council's plans to evict them from what is thought to be the UK's largest illegal site in Essex.

They say the High Court in London will consider an injunction to delay the eviction until Basildon Council has found "alternative, culturally-appropriate accommodation", as is required by international law.

Council officials, supported by Essex Police, are expected to take action to clear the site next month if the Travellers do not leave by midnight tonight, after the Court of Appeal ruled in 2008 that the council's decision to clear the unauthorised site was lawful.

Traveller families settled on the former scrapyard (pictured) more than a decade ago, but Basildon Council insists that planning laws have to be upheld as the site - which is on 'greenbelt land' - was occupied without planning permission in 2001 and has grown in the past decade. The local authority has served eviction notices on 51 illegal pitches involving up to 240 people on the site.

The High Court will sit at noon today to consider the case brought by lawyers on behalf of the Traveller families living at Dale Farm in Essex.

Residents will be joined by supporters from across Europe in a demonstration in front of the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand, London from noon. The actress Vanessa Redgrave, who visited Dale Farm yesterday, will be among those in attendance.
 
If the High Court fails to grant the injunction, Dale Farm could be cleared by bailiffs at any time after midnight tonight.

The eviction and the police operation supporting it will, together, cost an estimated £18 million, which is more than one third of the council's annual budget.

Human rights campaigners, bishops and rabbis have called for a halt to the eviction which Amnesty International says could leave hundreds homeless.

Speaking on the BBC's Today programme, council leader Tony Ball said: "Our bailiffs are carrying out the decision of the courts to clear the site. If there is disorder that's when the police will step in."

Defenders of the site say the clearance will force the community, which includes infants and elderly people who require constant medical care, onto the roads of Britain with no suitable site to move to.
 
 "This is our last chance to appeal to a judge to stop the eviction", said Kathleen McCarthy, a resident of Dale Farm. "We hope British justice will see fit to save us from this act of ethnic-cleansing."

The council says it has spent the last 10 years trying to avoid a forced clearance. It says it has offered - and will continue to offer - those Travellers about to be moved help with accommodation.

It says it's aware of issues around elderly and very young residents on the site, and says it "will work to ensure the clearance is carried out in a fair and transparent way".