£2.4m police bill for site eviction

The police operation to clear the UK's largest illegal travellers' site cost almost £2.4 million.

Essex Police confirmed the figure for the policing side of the clearance of Dale Farm, near Basildon, in October.

It had originally been estimated that policing could cost up to £10 million but the final bill is less than a quarter of that.

The clearance operation at
Dale Farm cost Essex Police
more than two million pounds

A report will be presented to Essex Police Authority's finance committee next week and a full breakdown of costs is expected later this month.

Basildon Council has not yet confirmed its costs for the operation, which includes paying a team of bailiffs.

It had set aside £8 million for the eviction - bringing the total forecast cost to £18 million.

Reports locally last week suggested the final cost would be £4.2 million. The council refused to confirm this but said it expected to be "under budget".

There were violent clashes as Essex Police led the operation to clear protesters from the six-acre site before council-employed bailiffs completed the clearance. The operation followed a decade-long row over unauthorised plots.

The Home Office had pledged to pay up to £4.65 million, or half of the policing cost. The Department for Communities and Local Government also contributed £1.2 million towards the eviction.

The remainder will come from policing and council budgets

784 TRAVELLER PITCHES APPROVED

More than 750 new and improved authorised pitches for traveller families were given the green light by the Government today as part of efforts to avoid a repeat of the Dale Farm stand off.

Ministers have signed off on bids totalling £47 million from councils and other providers across England - with bids also being taken for another £13 million of funding.

The Government hopes that boosting provision - alongside action to tackle unauthorised encampments - will help defuse tensions between settled and traveller communities.

The Government has approved 763 travelling pitch in order to to have a repeat of the Dale Farm incident in 2011

A decade-long dispute over the UK's largest unauthorised site at Dale Farm in Essex ended in violent clashes between police and protesters in October when the residents were evicted.

Communities Minister Andrew Stunell said: "This funding will help provide sites in a way that reflects local need in consultation with the local community.

"It will assist hundreds of traveller families find sites where they want to live and foster better relations with the existing communities and councils.

"We are ending the failed system where Whitehall attempted to dictate where sites went. Instead we have brought back fairness by ensuring that both travellers and the settled population are treated equally. New authorised sites, with the support of local communities, will be treated on an equal footing as new bricks and mortar homes, with councils getting powerful financial benefits for building authorised sites where they are needed."

In total 33 providers - 18 local councils and 15 housing associations - have been granted funding for 617 new and 167 improved pitches.

A breakdown of the winning bids can be found at: www.homesandcommunities.co.uk/sites/default/files/our-work/tpf_allocations_january2012.csv.