A COMMUNITY has slammed a council’s housing plan as “unsound” as it would cement the tensions between travellers and settled residents.

Residents in Hovefields Avenue, Wickford, believe if Basildon Council’s housing plan is passed in its current state there will be an imbalance between the traveller and non-traveller communities in their area.

The council is yet to agree its Local Plan - which will decide where 20,000 new homes, traveller sites and businesses are placed over the next 15 years.

Jill Walsh, 66, a spokesperson for the Hovefields Residents’ Association, said the plans would see 13 illegal pitches authorised and made legal - bringing the total in the Hovefields area to 26.

She said: “The council is just ignoring our concerns. The real fear is that what the council is doing is rewarding illegal development and that is so wrong. If they get authorised, what’s to stop others doing the same?”

Mrs Walsh’s son Chris said the traveller community would continue to outnumber the non-traveller residents in the area.

The 38-year-old added: “These are unauthorised plots - many subject to both enforcement notices and injunctions. Put simply, the council propose to ride roughshod over the laws of the land and reward people who unlawfully develop. This is a critical failure of the local government’s duty to protect settled residents.

“The council proposals will create a wholly untenable situation from one that is already bordering unbearable. They are throwing the residents to the wolves to avoid their responsibility to tackle unlawful behaviour.

“There has been an 18-year history of community tensions fuelled by the blight of unauthorised development in the area.

“The tensions in the community come from it being one that is completely out of balance, with the gypsy and traveller population dominating the settled residents at a ratio of approximately nine to one.”

The residents claim the plan, if authorised, will go against local government guidelines which state council’s should ensure the scale of traveller sites should not dominate the nearest settled community.

Another resident, 56-year-old Jenny Mace said the problems residents have been having will continue.

Mrs Mace, who has lived near Hovefields since 1999, said: “We already have about 12 and we’re going to end up with 26 plots down here.

“We all know what happened in 2010 - it just doesn’t work. We need a cohesive society as the council states in its own charter and we have not had that down here and now Andrew Baggott is going to make it worse.”

Basildon Council leader Andrew Baggott said he understands the concerns but that the local plan in its current form is the best solution.

He added: “When it comes to unauthorised sites, there’s two issues.

“The first is that there’s sites there that we’re never going to be able to get them out of on the basis of law because the time to do that has passed.

“There’s also an issue of who owns the land which can be fast and loose when it comes to travellers and there’s never a clear answer.

“By authorising these sites, it allows us to have more control from the council’s point of view because they will have to pay council tax so we will know who they are and what they are responsible for.

“If they are not forthcoming then the people on that site are not authorised to be there.”