'Knock down slave labourers' homes'

3:21pm Wednesday 28th May 2008

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A MOBILE home on a traveller pitch used to house illegal workers faces demolition.

Last month, the Echo's Slave Labour probe revealed the home on the caravan plot, known as Hatchertang, in Hovefields Avenue, Wick-ford, was being used to house at least four homeless workers employed by travellers running a driveway maintainance business.

Our expose, in April, highlighted how some travellers were recruiting vulnerable members of society for cheap labour, often housing them in poor conditions. Some employed by traveller kingpin Gerry McCann were living at Hatchertang.

The plot is owned by Mr McCann's daughter, Mary McCann, a single mother-of-four in her twenties, who told a public inquiry last April she lived there with her children.

She was appealing against Basildon Council orders to demolish the home, served after a traveller couple, who won planning permission to live there in 2004, moved out.

Roger Dennard sold up within days of a High Court judge allowing his family to live there.

However, the Planning Inspectorate has now ruled the plot can no longer be used, because the Dennards live elsewhere.

It concluded Miss Mc-Cann cannot stay because she has given up travelling and has no intention of doing it again.

Diane Lewis, planning inspector, said in her report: "My conclusion is Ms McCann does not have a nomadic habit of life and does not enjoy gipsy status as a matter of planning law and policy.

"Therefore, she is not able to benefit from planning policies aimed at providing gipsy caravan sites."

Jill Walsh, 54, a settled resident who lives nearby, said she was delighted.

She said: "This is great news.

"We were worried the appeal might be successful because the plot had been given planning permission when the Dennards were there."

Council leader Malcolm Buckley said: "We will enforce the decision as soon as possible.

"I will be checking how soon it can be cleared because this site was not part of the recent judicial review about Dale Farm and Hovefields."