AN ENFORCEMENT notice ordering travellers to vacate green belt land in Wickford has been quashed at appeal.

Basildon Council issued the notice at a six-pitch traveller site on land at Hillview, by the Southend Arterial Road, in November of 2020 stating the development had been set up without planning permission.

The site is surfaced with tarmac and comprised of residential caravans, bordered by fences and supplemented by utility and day rooms.

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The occupants of the site have won a legal battle to stay on the site after a government planning inspector ruled in their favour, citing the council’s failure to provide legal traveller sites.

“The council withdrew its emerging local plan earlier this year, and with this went any formal allocation of deliverable sites,” the inspector said in their ruling.

“I have been provided with no evidence to persuade me away from the conclusion that the council’s policies have failed to address the delivery of gypsy and traveller sites over a significant period of time.”

A 2020 study conducted by the council found there was a need to provide 85 new pitches across the borough for travellers.

The inspector ruled that, as 63 per cent of the borough land lies within the green belt, “there will need to be reliance to a degree on the green belt for the provision of pitches going forward.”

The ruling comes just one month after a larger group of travellers won an appeal to stay put on land adjacent to the Hillview site. 

Deputy Council leader at the time, councillor Kerry Smith, says the notices served to the larger group were the result of a legal process which cost the council “about £250,000".

Councillor Andrew Baggott, leader of Basildon Council, said: “We accept the inspector’s findings and thank them for their diligence with this particular case. 

“We have always said we will take whatever action necessary to protect the greenbelt wherever we can, and we accept that this comes at a cost. We will continue to challenge inappropriate or unauthorised development where we believe it is right to do so.”