To think that rights/wrongs aside, a council needing to make £300m cuts should focus it's funds somewhere other than evicting gypsies?

[Blubell]

I know there are massive fors and againsts in the Dale Farm evictions, and I don't want to start a big travellers debate, but in this time of austerity measures, and the fact that Essex council needs to cut £300m in 3 years, is evicting the site now, when it's a case that has been going on for 10 years really the best way to spend the little cash they have? Its been reported it's going to cost the council £18m to return the site - which used to be a scrapyard so hardly a place of outstanding beauty - back to greenbelt, how many carers, libraries etc will be lost to fund that? Just a thought.......

yeah lets let all the law breakers get away with it to save money

this lot get away with plenty as it is and everyone seems scared to death to admit it - elephant in the room

I read this morning that 103 of the 106 pupils at the primary school near the site are travellers children. What will happen to that school if the travellers are moved on?

I know Lugs, I honestly don't know what the answer is either, I appreciate they have to follow the law, it just seems madness that the money will be spent there rather than somewhere more important.

I'm not condoning breaking the law by any means, I just think that if it's took 10 years to get to this point then a couple more wouldn't hurt if it means the old lady still gets her carer, or the child still gets their teaching assistant, the library stays open........

I don't think that the council really have a choice here. They are following the law and it costs money to enforce. They can't not enforce it because that way lies anarchy. It is madness that this is the cost, but I would be laying the blame at the people who have caused all of this in the first place - the travellers.

I think you're right about the financial issues, it would have been better to have dealt with the site years ago so it didn't sprial into this huge mess. But I have no sympathy for the travellers, they've made their bed and now have to lie in it.

(And who are all these so called 'activists' who have joined them and seem to be the ones now making all the trouble? What have they got to do with it?)

They built without planning permission, on an old scrapyard. Plenty of people build without planning permission every day, the apply for it retrospectively. Planning permission had been granted on the land next door, so it wasn't totally unreasonable to think they may have got it there. It was not right to do what they did, but it's hardly crime of the century. Surely the council could have come to a temporary compromise until they were in a better financial position. And it won't solve the traveller problem because they still live legally on the land next door. It's better to lose a battle if it means winning the war.

habitual truants - no one would notice if they turned up or not.

www.education.gov.uk/cgi-bin/performancetables/school_10.pl?Mode=Z&Base=p&Type=SC&Year=10&Phase=p&Begin=f&No=8812251&Num=881

Persistant absence - 53.7%

I read this morning that 103 of the 106 pupils at the primary school near the site are travellers children. What will happen to that school if the travellers are moved on?

Wow!

If it's a good school and difficult to get a place, I suppose other locals will send their children.

If it isn't very good then, it could end up being closed down & loss of jobs. I suppose that's one way of saving money.

I'm not sure many people do build without planning permission and then apply retrospectively. The council can order such a building to be pulled down and it is a big waste of any property developers money to go down this route.

It is was of those subjects where on paper I am live and let live but in all honesty as long it is not at the bottom of my back garden.

YABU.... I'm sure the council-taxpayers of Basildon are very happy that their money is being used to enforce local planning laws. Who wants to live in an environment of squatter camps and shanty-towns.?

As the cost of this eviction has escalated so ridiculously, money should be available from central government to pay for it. After all, they are the ones that make the laws about local councils having to provide somewhere for gypsies even when they don't pay council tax. Council tax payers should not have to fund this at all.

Exactly what I was thinking troisgarcons, I saw an interview with a traveller lady on Sky News earlier saying 'Yes all the kids would be in school today but for the eviction, we've had to pull them out'...........yeah right!!

Some posters might benefit from studying history, concentrating on he immediate aftermath of the Weimar Republic.
Probably the council think it will distract attention from the cuts efficiency savings.
The 'so-called activists' of whom you speak probably consider travellers/gypsies/Roma to be ethnic minorities so think the evictions are ethnic cleansing. A phrase with which you may be familiar.

You know a thread's dead when someone tries to liken it to Nazi Germany

The local school is considered good but equally has a rep that (acocrding to news reports) will take a while to shift becuase of their intake. But whether chidlren continue to attend depends on where they end up no?

Callisto it's my experience that it's quite common: certainly when this happened to where we live (next door) council pursued for a bit, got sick of it then gave the permission the OK despite it being a p[rotected area: council said just not worth costs.

PS... the last traveller I heard trying to outline how he was suffering because of cultural prejudice against his ethnicity gave the example of schooling. His children had been punished at school because, if they got into a dispute, they'd settle it by taking lumps out of the other children. This was discrimination, he said, because in the traveller community it's traditional to settle arguments with a punch-up.....

The school probably only opened to facilitate the travelling population.

Anyway its only half of the site which is illegally built and thus they will have to travel elsewhere - my guess is right over the Dartford Bridge and into the Medway towns where there is an equally large travelling population domiciled.

We have several small traveller sites locally, maybe 6-8 caravans and you wouldn't know they are there. I suppose, like anything, when it's becomes a ghetto-style environment, problems begin.

And I have to say, regardless of whether it is a popular view or not, brick built houses don't travel! They are static. Therefore, the fact that some people with travelling roots, wishing to maintain their culture (well the bit of it that doesnt seem to include travelling anywhere) rather makes it a life style choice. I would also be looking hard and fast at the legitimate property ownership in Rathkeale by the travelling community - which shows they do indeed have a place to move to.

I can't understand how they can be classed as travellers and yet are living in one place?

Trivial changes to property get retrospective planning permission but this was not trivial. It was deliberate arrogant defiance of the law that's good enough for the rest of us, made worse by the subsequent playing of the race card.

My sympathy is entirely with the locals who have suffered all these years and with all the taxpayers of the district who have been forced into this wasteful expenditure.

Troisgarcons, the school was already open, the "local" population moved their children elsewhere when the travellers arrived. I guess if the majority of the children leave, the locals will again send their children to the school, but if they don't transfer their children back quick enough, I guess the school might have to temporarily close.

I think likening this situation in any way to ethnic cleansing is a huge insult tbh.