EXCLUSIVE The travellers' tactics: How travellers are obliterating Britain's prized countryside to turn them into concrete carbuncles for their caravans in illegal landgrabs

Daily Mail​

2 days ago

Travellers are using 'military' shock and awe-style tactics to obliterate areas of idyllic British countryside and turn them into concrete 'carbuncles' for their caravans, it can be revealed.
Groups across the UK have been accused of carrying out brazen bank holiday 'landgrabs' to rapidly build camps under the noses of council chiefs while their offices are closed.
Allegedly weaponising the national breaks, industrial diggers, excavators and lorries carrying gravel, are mobilised to rip up and pave over fields in protected green belts during 'deliberate and meticulously planned' operations.
Cynically, the 'illegal' conversions are done without any planning permission, flouting development rules - with 'retrospective' applications later submitted to councils to allow the newly-constructed sites to remain.
In the past month, at least two new encampments have been set up in West Sussex and Cheshire during the two May bank holidays, with fuming locals accusing travellers of making a 'mockery' of building laws.
The latest unauthorised works took place in the quaint village of Burtonwood, near Warrington, in Cheshire, during last week's bank holiday, with travellers taking less than 72 hours to convert a field into a gravel car park.
They covered half the open space in hardcore and also built a 10ft-high wooden fence around the boundary, with groups allegedly working through the night - much to the fury of dismayed locals.
'I have never felt so impotent as a councillor in not being able to do something,' local politician Stuart Mann said last night. 'The neighbours suffered for 36 hours solid that went through the night. It was a military operation in terms of how [the travellers] achieved it.'
The works on the land appear to mirror a similar incident weeks earlier near the West Sussex town of Petworth, in the heart of the protected South Downs National Park, during the VE Day bank holiday at the start of May.
A tranquil plot in Blind Lane, Lurgashall, was transformed into a building site as heavy machinery ploughed through the field without planning permission, turning it into gravel car park, with 10 caravans later appearing there.
Local MP Andrew Griffith was left horrified by the unauthorised development and now fears travellers elsewhere could launch similar landgrabs if planning rules aren't tightened up.
'These are clearly deliberate and meticulously planned operations,' Mr Griffith, the Conservatives' Shadow Business and Trade Secretary, told MailOnline.
'In the Lurgashall case it took far too long for the local council to act leaving ratepayers and residents at the mercy of this devastating planning blight.
'It is clearly foreseeable that bank holiday weekends are the moment of maximum danger and yet that's when town halls fail to ensure staff cover.'
Work at the six-acre Burtonwood site in Cheshire reportedly started at 6pm on Friday, May 23.
MailOnline understands it came after travellers legitimately purchased the plot of land.
Within hours, villagers reported excavators and tipper trucks working through the night to remove soil and replace it with concrete, completing the job in less than three days.
Before and after aerial photographs show the extent of the destruction and more than a dozen caravans and other vehicles have since moved onto the site.
Although a retrospective planning application has now been submitted to Warrington Borough Council, Cllr Mann said an investigation had been launched after complaints from locals, who say the land is green belt and should be for agricultural use only.
He claimed to have been bombarded by 'hundreds' of emails from worried locals, with more than 50 people turning up at his surgery to express concerns.
Speaking to MailOnline yesterday, Cllr Mann said the community had been left feeling 'helpless' and angry at the development.
But it has also led to questions about how the local authority could have reacted to the issue, which could now take weeks to resolve despite an enforcement notice being issued.
'In my head, why was there nothing that could be done to at least put a pause on what was happening?' he said. 'Why couldn't someone turn up and say stop let's work something out.'
Other residents have reportedly had applications for their own developments on neighbouring land refused by the council, according to Cllr Mann.
'We have to have a level of faith in the planning process but it needs to be fair for anybody to build something,' he added.
Nigel Catlow, vice chairman, of Burtonwood and Westbrook Parish Council, described it as a 'very serious and fast-moving issue'.
In a letter to the council, he said: 'The landowners appear to be in serious breach, making the most of the Bank Holiday and the council being on a long weekend. 'This is of great concern to many residents and council taxpayers in Burtonwood and the wider area of Warrington West.'
Locals took to social media to express their anger, with one saying: 'The transformation is shocking.'
Another, Jacqui Worrall, wrote: 'Breach!?.. it's a s****** concrete jungle!!!!'
While Ray Houghton added: 'Blame the person who sold the land to them in the first place. The people doing this have no respect for the laws.'
At the West Sussex site, efforts made to stop the development from going ahead appeared to fail.
Builders arrived at the site on Friday, May 2, and work continued over the Bank Holiday weekend despite council notices and visits from Sussex Police.
By Sunday afternoon, a septic tank was seen being delivered to the site as well as more gravel - with caravans later occupying the plot.
A female council planning officer posted a second notice on the gate to the site on the Monday as three men carried on working. An earlier order to stop work was ignored.
It's unclear who was responsible for the unauthorised development. However, Mr Griffith said locals had been left appalled by it.
Speaking at the time, the MP for Arundel and South Downs said: 'I completely share the outrage and concern of residents about this illegal breach of all respected planning standards and behaviour.
'It makes a mockery of a system where we all jump through lengthy and costly hoops to install a dormer window when such brazen breaches happen unchecked.'
The MP added the incident came 'almost a year to the day' that Chichester District Council's Lib Dem administration 'advertised a £50,000-a-year traveller liaison role which many felt sent precisely the wrong signal'.
In May 2023, a beauty spot in the Cotswolds was ruined by travellers, who bulldozed their way onto a site they had not got permission to live on, despite the council trying to stop it happening for 17 years.
People in Kayte Lane, a rural community below Cleeve Hill, in Southam, near Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, feared for years the unauthorised occupation of the land would happen before it finally did two years ago.
Sixteen caravans plus several cars and vans entered the site, which the travellers moved onto over the late spring bank holiday.
Travellers laid down hardstanding in the field, put up a high wooden fence along the edge of it and installed CCTV cameras, some of which overlook their neighbours.
One local resident, who did not want to be identified, said the group used a bulldozer to clear vegetation from parts of the site when they moved on to it.
It sparked a legal row, with locals last year accusing the authorities of not doing enough to prevent it from happening.
Tewkesbury Borough Council first obtained a court order in 2007 to try to protect the greenbelt land, which is close to Cheltenham Racecourse, from being developed.
It refused a retrospective planning application from the travellers in November 2023, after receiving more than 200 objections.
But the unauthorised development still went ahead, sparking local fury.
'Tewkesbury Borough Council don't enforce anything. We're fighting against a brick wall,' one resident raged at the time.'
Speaking last night, Mr Griffith urged action by Labour to clampdown on groups brazenly flouting planning laws nationally.
'The government must use the Planning and Infrastructure Bill currently going through Parliament to remove what increasingly feels to many like a 'two-tier' planning system,' he said.Chichester District Council has already secured a High Court injunction to halt further activity on the two-hectare field near Lurgashall.
The injunction prohibits any further unauthorised works or vehicles and caravans entering the site. If a person fails to comply with the order, it could result in a jail term.
Council leader Adrian Moss insisted the authority would 'not hesitate to take action' when planning rules are broken.
'We want to assure the community that we are doing everything in our power to respond to this. We will also be working with those on the site, local parish councils, and the local community, to offer support,' he said.
A spokesman for Chichester District Council added: 'We take these matters incredibly seriously. We have planning rules in place to protect areas of countryside in our district, including the South Downs National Park, and if harmful development is carried out then we will take appropriate enforcement action.
'We want to assure the community that we are doing everything in our power to respond to this. We will also be working with those on the site, local parish councils, and the local community, to offer support.'
Sussex Police told MailOnline it was aware of the traveller site but said it was a 'civil matter'.
A spokesman for Warrington Borough Council confirmed it had 'established a priority enforcement case' over the situation in Burtonwood.
'We have received a report about a potential breach of planning on land off Farmers Lane in Burtonwood and are currently investigating the issue.'