Friday - June 19, 2009

Gipsy families ask for £2 million to leave ILLEGAL camp.

A network of Gipsy families who are facing eviction from Britain’s biggest traveller site tried to persuade their local council to pay them £2 million to move.

SOURCE

Richard Sheridan, leader of the Crays Hill camp, also known as Dale Farm, tried to broker the deal with Basildon District Council in Essex, saying they would use the cash to buy a new plot.

During a phone call to the local authority, Mr Sheridan said the £2 million earmarked for the eviction of the 86 families at the site in Billericay, Essex, should be given to them for an alternative site.

Mr Sheridan rang the secretary of Bala Mahendran, chief executive of the Council, who recorded the exchange and emailed it to the council’s legal department.

The email read: “Just to confirm I have spoke with Richard Sheridan – a tricky call!

“[He] suggested the council give him the £2 million it will cost to remove the travellers and they will all leave and buy another site.”

The council did not respond to the request.

The row over the illegal camp has been rumbling on for almost eight years, during which Basildon Council have paid more than £700,000 in legal fees.

Council leader Tony Ball said the deal was a ‘non-starter’ but said they would continue to negotiate with the travellers.

He said: “The approximate value of £2 million to which Richard Sheridan refers represents not only the expected cost of the eviction, but also the cost of returning the land to green belt status.”

Talking about the offer, he said: “It is a non-starter. Where would he go? Another unauthorised site?

“We do not want to spend taxpayers’ money like this.

“If he has the influence he says he has to get people to move, without the payment, he is worth talking to. No one wants an eviction.

“He is the only man we know of to represent travellers so we will engage with him in the absence of anyone else.”

Mr Sheridan, 40, has not been an appellant in the long legal battle to fight eviction, but his wife Martina McCarthy claimed legal aid to carry out her fight through the courts.

Grattan Puxon, a gipsy campaigner, said the cash demand was one of the options considered by the travellers.

He said: “Basildon is still under obligation to identify about 60 pitches.

“One option we want to put to them is to identify land with guaranteed planning permission which we could bid for or they could use the money set aside for the eviction to fund it.”

Len Gridley, 50, a local resident who has fought against the camp for five years, said: “Mr Sheridan is holding the council to ransom. This is not about homes but money.

“He has shown he is ready willing and able to find another site.”

Nothing for me to add to what I said in previous post except this.
If the system enjoys the screwing it’s getting from these folks, then the system will damn well get more of the same. Again and again.

The problem seems to me to be less with the travellers then with the authorities who have allowed this mess to get where it is.  This is where appeasement leads. 

Posted by peiper     on 06/19/2009 at 08:33 AM   
Filed Under: • Travelers/Gypsies/Squatters • UK •  
• Comments (3) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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