Dale Farm - Dale Farm

Dale Farm

Dale Farm is a six acre plot of land on Oak Lane, near the A127 Southend Arterial road. Dale Farm has been subject to Green Belt controls since 1982. Next to the Dale Farm site there is an authorised travellers' site known as Oak Lane. This has Council planning permission, and provides 34 legal pitches.

Dale Farm cottage was leased to Ray Bocking, a scrap metal dealer in the early 1960s. Land in the north-east corner was used as a scrap yard without planning permission until 2001.

As a site for travellers, Dale Farm was started in the 1980s when a planning appeal was won by two families against Basildon District Council on the southern end of the site, with the help of a Planning Law expert, Robert Home. Prof. Home stated that "I was first involved when two Gypsy families wanted planning permission for single family plots down Oak Road and we fought it against Basildon Council and we were successful." He also claimed that although it was in the greenbelt, even 30 years ago the area was described as mixed use. Also, "There were houses down this part of Crays Hill that were actually in the greenbelt, small rural businesses here, then the Gypsy caravans came in. But there had always been Gypsy caravans in and around Basildon." Subsequently, the council ceded permission to 40 families before deciding against granting further permissions as other parts of the site were occupied.

Mr Bocking said that the site "was originally concreted over by Basildon council". Basildon council deny this, although a contractor who worked for the previous owner said, "Basildon council regularly brought waste tarmac and rubble from roadworks and dumped it on Dale Farm for a period of 10 years until the 1990s." Basildon council says "it served enforcement notices against in 1992 and 1994 and council contractors did not put down any hardstanding on the farm."

Traveller John Sheridan purchased Dale Farm cottage and the green fields around it from Mr Bocking for £120,000 in 2001. At this time unplanned development started. There is a report that plots were changing hands for £50,000.

Various planning breaches were reported. Basildon Council first served enforcement notices in 2001 and the Travellers brought legal action in an attempt to have these repealed. The council has said that planning applications for the caravans and chalets on the site were rejected because the land was green belt.

The Guardian newspaper reported that a "temporary order was granted by the then Secretary of State, John Prescott ".

In reference to this temporary order, the government's Communities and Local Government department, in their report on "Site Provision and Enforcement for Gypsies and Travellers", dated December 2007, wrote:

The site has a long and contentious planning history. Temporary permission was granted by the Secretary of State in 2005(?) with the intention that this would give the site residents and the local authority time to find a suitable alternative site. However, no such progress has been made, and the local authority has now received a homelessness application for the 400 people who claim that eviction from the site will leave them homeless. At the same time, opposition amongst parts of the settled community towards site residents has become ever fiercer, with parents from the settled community withdrawing their children from the school attended by children from Dale Farm, and the view regularly expressed in letters to the local press that Gypsies and Travellers living on the site are somehow 'above the law'.

Basildon Council's Development Control Committee minutes state that: "In June 2005, once the two-year compliance period had lapsed, the Council resolved that direct action was necessary to secure compliance with the notices. It was this decision (reconsidered in December 2007) that was then made the subject of Judicial Review proceedings, which were heard in February 2008."

In 2008, Essex County Council's Racial Equality Council funded a £12,000 community centre at the site, built without planning permission.