THURROCK Council Leader Cllr Rob Gledhill has welcomed the tough sentence given to a man who removed a fence which the council had erected to prevent illegal encampments being set up.
The man appeared at Basildon Magistrates earlier this month where he was given a 12 month conditional discharge and forced to pay £500 in costs to the council and £105 court costs after he was caught on camera taking down the fencing in Clyde, East Tilbury.
Cllr Gledhill said: “It is incredibly disappointing to learn that someone would attempt to remove fencing which had only recently been erected to prevent people setting up illegal encampments on public land.
“I was pleased to see Basildon Magistrates handing down such a tough sentence and I hope this serves as a warning to anyone who is thinking of damaging council property. We will always prosecute to the full letter of the law.
“Now we have an interim injunction preventing illegal encampments we will no longer have to rely on creating physical barriers and have the legal means to move encampments on in just a few hours.”
I’d like to set the record straight here. There never was or has been a fence here, they are small rotting wooden bollards. These bollards are NOT to stop an encampment area. These bollards were put here years ago to stop residents parking on the grass verge because they had budget left over and had nothing better to spend it on, so this is a LIE! The area is a quiet cul de sac and unless the travellers vans are shrunken down to something you would buy as a barbie accessory then you would not get any caravans setting up here. The reason these bollards were removed was for health and safety. Although cllr Robert Gledhill states that ‘a fence’ was recently erected, this is also a lie! These have been here long enough to have gone rotten and at least two had snapped off at the base and were already lying on the floor. The ones that were removed were also rotten and dangerously loose. These were removed with the residents support. This was community effort as they were not only a danger, but also a nuisance to the residents. For some reason the accused was singled out as the person criminally damaging council property. The council had been called to find out if these were council owned but no one could give a definitive answer. The footage was taken by a resident from across the road on a mobile phone, not cctv as stated, who had nothing to do with our little close and he filmed not only the posts being removed by neighbours and the accused, but also my 9 year old daughter who was also able to knock one of the rotten posts out herself. As soon as we were made aware of these being council property we offered to replace them. We were told it was too late. Please when you read a ‘Story’ like this just remember there are always two sides. My husband is a good man that was out there trying to sort out a problem that had clearly been ignored. He admitted in court he was guilty and under the circumstances the courts were lenient thankfully. This is absolutely horrifying to see the defamation of character that has been printed here, and also that the council has released to the press. I am so disappointed and have completely lost faith in a council I once had respect for. I invite councillor Gledhill to come and see how many travellers can set up on the 6 feet wide area of grass that the bollards were put in for. An absolute waste of council funds.