Villagers spotted
The borough council took legal action against more than 20 named respondents and “persons unknown” to stop them living on the land and developing it, after villagers spotted them moving on to the site over the Easter bank holiday weekend.
At the time, families on the site applied for retrospective planning permission to create a “gypsy site”.
Lawyers representing the defendants argued the land should be regarded as “grey belt”, not green belt, and the travellers’ planning application had good prospects of success.
They also said travellers regarded their caravans as their homes and said the cultural context had to be understood.
Kennedy, who made his judgement at the Royal Courts of Justice, said there had been “flagrant” breaches of interim orders and granting a final injunction was “just and proportionate”.
Pither said: “We’re all amazed and astonished as it’s been a tough four months, but we’re chuffed to bits that we did as much as we could.”
However, he called the land “a mess” as there were “6,000 tonnes of hardcore on it that they [the travellers] brought in”.
“It’s going to take a lot of diggers and lorries to remove that, but hardcore has a value, so groundworks contractors would probably be willing to remove it.”