An English local authority has won an unprecedented high court injunction banning three families of Irish Travellers from setting up illegal encampments anywhere in an Essex town.

The temporary injunction, which protects nearly 500 plots of land, including schools, parks, schoolyards and road verges, was awarded to Essex county council and Harlow district council by Justice Paterson in the high court.

Thirty-six named defendants were warned that they “may be held in contempt of court and may be imprisoned, fined or have your assets seized” if they disobey the order or encourage others to do so.

In several thousands of pages of court documents, the two local authorities said Travellers had set up 109 illegal sites around the town since October 2013, prompting local fury.

Since then, there have been persistent allegations of damage to public spaces, fly tipping, people excreting in public areas, the daubing of excrement on to a slide in a school for disabled children as well as other disorder, the court was told.

The district council, which supplies legal pitches to other Travellers, obtained court orders over the last 18 months to clear illegal sites “but they just moved 200 yards down the road”, said Labour leader of the council Cllr Jon Clempner.

The families possess legal pitches “in Bradford, Stoke and Cambridge”, Mr Clempner said.

“We checked vehicle registration numbers and passed them on to their local councils,” he told The Irish Times.

Complied

The difficulties began in late 2013 when one of the families was refused planning to lay down hard-stands for caravans on land that they had bought near Epping Forest, a few miles from Harlow.

Conservative MP Robert Halfon said the Travellers’ Irish ethnicity had nothing to do with the court order, pointing out that Harlow had a better record than many other places in offering legal pitches.

“The siege of Harlow is over,” he said. “I have had hundreds of emails in the last few days from local residents expressing a huge sense of relief that the Travellers have left.

“Like most residents, I cannot accept that it is acceptable for them to build illegal encampments wherever they like. Equality before the law means that everyone should be treated equally before it.”

Speaking earlier in a House of Commons debate under parliamentary privilege, Mr Halfon said residents had spoken of fields being turned into outside toilets and churned-up mud on green spaces because of cars driving in and out.

Unhappy that the local council had not acted more strongly earlier, Mr Halfon said: “It is outrageous that hardworking Harlow residents have to spend thousands of pounds through their taxes on clean-up costs.”

Harlow district council has now written to secretary of state for communities and local government Eric Pickles demanding tougher powers to deal with illegal encampments.

Notice to quit

Equally, the letter says, councils should be able to issue one-year orders to prevent Travellers coming back, while they should also have extra powers to remove unauthorised Traveller encampments without the need to go to the courts again.

The letter continues that councils should also be able to move on Travellers and prevent their return for a year if they refuse to accept an offer of temporary accommodation in the locality.