Bailiffs clear travellers' plots

About 50 officers support bailiffs clearing the vacant plots

Police and bailiffs have moved onto a travellers site in Essex to clear part of the land after the district council declared the camp illegal.

About 50 officers supported an enforcement order from Basildon Council to enter the site at Five Acres Farm, Hovefields Drive, Wickford.

Bailiffs have used diggers to clear four vacant plots.

The council is prevented from evicting families after injunctions were granted pending judicial review hearings.

'Ethnic cleansing'

Grattan Puxon, a travellers' representative, who was on site on Tuesday said: "These planning regulations are a smokescreen for ethnic cleansing. There is no other word for it."

A spokesman for Basildon District Council told the BBC: "Police will secure the site to prevent further incursions.

"Injunctions obtained by travellers pending judicial review hearings prevent Tuesday's action being extended to these occupied plots."

The council said Hovefields had been the subject of a number of enforcement notices dating from 1998 and travellers were occupying the site illegally.

The site near Basildon is home to about 40 families with between 10 and 14 seeking a judicial review of the council's decision which was taken on 24 January, to evict them.