Agencies/London


Dale Farm residents sit and drink tea outside the High Court in central London. The residents lost their high court challenge to halt their eviction from Britain’s largest traveller site, near Billericay
Residents at the Dale Farm travellers’ site in Essex have lost their long-running legal battle against Basildon council, after the high court ruled that their eviction could go ahead.
Residents had appealed to the judge to stop the eviction under the European convention of human rights but the court dismissed three judicial reviews and said the council’s decision of May 17 to evict was lawful.
After a decade of legal battles the judge said it was “astonishing” that residents had delayed their legal bid to almost the day of eviction.
They obtained an emergency injunction on September 19 after a different high court judge said there were grounds to believe the council may “go further” in clearing the site than its eviction notices allowed.
But justice Ouseley, sitting in at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, ruled the travellers had delayed too long in challenging Basildon council’s decision to take direct action against them.
Justice Ouseley said he was satisfied that the council had acted lawfully and added that the essential features in the cases before him came down against the travellers. The criminal law must apply equally to travellers and non-travellers alike, he added.
The Dale Farm site, on green belt land, is currently home to around 400 people. The clearance of the six-acre site was halted on September 19 when the travellers obtained a high court injunction preventing bailiffs moving in, while the courts were asked to rule on several areas of contention.
On October 3 a judge ruled that the council could remove caravans from 49 out of 54 plots at the site and the majority of concrete pitches on the site.
But he also ruled that walls, fences and gates could not be removed because they were in place before traveller families bought the land at Dale Farm, or because they were not specified in the council’s eviction notices, despite the council’s repeated assertions that the site had to be cleared.
It was not immediately clear when the council would now carry out the eviction order.
The travellers own the six-acre site but lack planning permission to build on it and the council has been trying to kick them off the land for a decade. But the travellers have attracted celebrity support while the case, coupled with a series of colourful television documentaries, has sparked debate about the treatment of the nomadic Irish traveller communities in Britain.