Save Dale Farm- 2010

DALE FARM EVICTION COULD COST £20M
(Letter sent to local council-Basildon Essex England)

Dear Councillors,

On the eve of your Council meeting this Thursday (2 Dec), which we understand will include an update on plans for the Dale Farm eviction operation, we appeal to you to reconsider the Council's position.

Since this huge eviction was voted on in 2005, many things have changed.

Among the most important is the cost. Because of the growing opposition to this eviction, Essex Police are seeking funding of £10m from the Home Office; BDC as you are aware have asked for a loan from the Government for a similar amount. These are large sums to request at a time of severe expenditure cuts.

After all, what is involved is merely a five acre site, most of which was a scrapyard. Only four residential properties back on to Dale Farm.

Small evictions and legal costs, not to mention administrative work, have already cost between £1.5m and £2m. Another £1.9m has been set aside for the operation.

There is a doubt in many minds that Constant & Co., who have never taken on such a large and determined community - whose sympathisers and supporters increase in numbers by the week - will be able to complete the inhuman task set them.

During the Hovefields evictions two pregnant mothers and a lad with learning
difficulties were evicted, property was needlessly destroyed, and only two persons out of seven families were able to find another place within Essex. The lack of available legal plots has made Dale Farm residents desperate

Then there are the two appeals by United Nations bodies not to go ahead until
acceptable alternative accommodation is available. And the extensive media coverage which will harm Basildon's image at home and abroad.

But even if "successful" - and here one cannot overlook the suffering of the families concerned, among whom are many children and sick persons- that will not be the end of the matter, nor solve the problem for anybody.

The families will be compelled to move on to other locations in the district, and the whole cycle will continue. Legal advice and legal preparations are already in hand to meet the needs of that situation.

Legal costs, costs of direct action operations (if that option is chosen) and administrative costs will all add up to an ongoing strain on the Council's financial resources.

There is too the possibility of actions for damages by Dale Farm Residents, all of whose properties have been surveyed, photographed and inventoried by Essex University Human Rights Clinic for this purpose. They may claim millions in damages and will pursue their rights in the European Court of Human Rights.

We are ready to sit down with councillors and officers at any time and discuss a way forward. The situation has been much helped by the offer of extensive pieces of land by the Homes and Communities Agency which they say could be utilized for caravan parks.

The DFHA has itself submitted plans for such a caravan park on HCA land at Pound Lane, Laindon.

Two simple solutions present themselves:
1) give favourable consideration to new
planning applications for the present Dale Farm
properties;
2) allow developemnet of alternative caravan parks
on selected HCA sites.

The first option would cost the Council nothing, the second could be accomplished for less than 20% of the eventual bill the Council may face if there is not some reasonable change in policy.

Richard Sheridan
chair DFHA
Grattan Puxon
secretary

www.travellerstimes.org www.advocacynet.org www.essex.ac.uk www.romea.cz

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Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• unmanageabletv
• itistv
• 303
• fildvoid
• hazel
• sileotoe
• dale
• farm
• essex
• gypsy
• roma
• traveller
• nomad
• human
• rights
• indigenous
• homeless

[itistv]

Many Thanks to Hazel for this excellent video - telling it how it is. We need cooperation with the authorities and locals not prejudice and annihilation. Help our homeless. fil d void

[skawashers]

the meaning of the word traveler is to travel about . These aint Travelers if they are setting home on a Permanent site. If they want to be travellers or known as. Then Travel about . If they want a Permanent home then live in a prebuild home Not a caravan.

[theguyisinthailand]

an idea of a plo will start if the people find no rights, the end will be more extremes. gov't will say it has the law on it's side to give us the power, the people will say we give the gov't power. the money people people sit back and and laugh over the idea that the real crimes or out of site and mind. long live freedoms for all.