Families in a leafy millionaires’ village have been left ‘horrified’ after an alleged traveller camp was illegally set up during a suspected land-grab.
Locals in the picturesque community of Bramley, near Guildford, Surrey, say their tranquil rural idyll has been under siege for days.
A group allegedly arrived late on Friday night, using construction equipment to rip up a field and smash through hedges, before laying down hard-standing and fencing in a ‘military operation’.
Locals say the blitz took a matter of hours, transforming the once-quiet patch of grassland – close to a nature reserve and exclusive golf club – into an encampment.
At least five caravans are now pitched there following the alleged land-grab, which has outraged local families in the well-to-do village, where homes can reach an eye-watering £3.25million, with the average house price hitting almost £700,000.
The unauthorised site was set up without permission, flouting stringent planning laws of the area, close to Surrey’s prestigious ‘golden triangle’ where some of the UK’s wealthiest people live.
The travellers submitted a planning application to the council hours after beginning work on their encampment, the Daily Mail has learned.
One villager, who saw the travellers steamroll in, said residents had been left stunned. ‘Everyone round and about is horrified at the illegal activity as since the land was sold there have been no planning notices around the field,’ they told the Daily Mail.
The travellers reportedly arrived late on Friday evening and took just over 24 hours to convert the field into a new encampment.
The picturesque community of Bramley, near Guildford, Surrey, saw an unauthorised traveller camp springing up over the weekend, with a number of caravans now based on the former field
Locals say the group arrived on Friday night and used heavy machinery to hack away bushes and land, with fencing and hard-standing installed without planning permission
The travellers blocked off Unstead Lane and Trunley Heath Road while they ripped apart the field, which had been earmarked to receive the ‘national landscape’ protected status – a rebranding of the old ‘area of outstanding natural beauty’ title.
‘On Saturday morning the roads were blocked by private vehicles, large construction vehicles moved in, hedges [were] removed by a field, new entrance [was] made and by Monday morning there is a caravan park,’ one resident said.
Horrified villagers spent the weekend pleading with Guildford Borough Council and Surrey Police to try and evict the travellers, but to little success.
It’s understood the land was purchased by an unnamed buyer before being developed. A planning application was submitted, however, the council confirmed there were ‘no existing planning permissions’ granted to build on the field.
A council spokeswoman added: ‘We are investigating this as a priority and are visiting the site today so that we have a full understanding of the situation. Once we have completed the site visit, we will assess the case fully and decide on the next steps.’
Villagers now fear two plots of adjacent land, set to go on sale today, could fall victim to the same fate if rapid action is not taken.
Councillor Jane Austin, chairman of Bramley Parish Council, said locals were up in arms, adding: ‘Friday night these people went to bed looking out over a field. Overnight truck after truck of aggregate was delivered, hedgerows ripped down a new entrance created… It was like a military operation.’
Former Chancellor Sir Jeremy Hunt, who is the local MP, is supporting the villagers. He told the Daily Mail: ‘Residents are rightly furious about the lack of action to address unauthorised encampments like this, which are appearing with increasing frequency.
‘This is a rural field, recognised as being of such quality that it is earmarked for inclusion in the Surrey Hills National Landscape, yet local people now face the prospect of potentially years of planning enforcement action – with no guarantee of success.
‘Such drawn-out processes risk consuming vast amounts of council time and money, while the local community continues to suffer the consequences. Surely early intervention and decisive action would help prevent situations like this from escalating in the first place?’
The group reportedly took about 24 hours to complete the site, in the latest alleged land-grab carried out by travellers in recent months
The historic village of Bramley dates back to Saxon times and has a population of around 3,700 people.
The traveller site is located close to the stunning Bramley Golf Club, which has breathtaking views of Surrey’s rolling hills.
Close by is the protected Unstead Wetland Nature Reserve, a site of specific scientific interest.
Cllr Austin feared those responsible for tearing up the land could have now permanently damaged protected wildlife habitats and said ‘the whole thing makes a mockery of the planning system’.
She added: ‘People are really devastated. They’re upset and angry at the seeming lack of ability of all the authorities to take action when it’s so desperately needed.
‘Preventing landscape from being aggregated over is surely better than years of planning enforcement to get this land back.
‘Everyone accepts the Gypsy Romani Traveller community needs somewhere to go but the law should apply to everybody – 99 per cent of people abide by it. it’s absolutely galling for local people that it seemingly hasn’t happened here.’
News of the development comes weeks after the Daily Mail revealed how scores of unauthorised camps have sprung up in isolated fields, prized rural green belts and protected national parks in the past few months.
The blight has affected villages and towns in Buckinghamshire, West Sussex, Nottinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Gloucester, Devon, Worcestershire, Cheshire and in Hampshire’s New Forest.
Terrified locals say they are ‘powerless’ to act, with some fearful of reprisals for speaking out against the shameless flouting of strict planning laws.
Meanwhile, furious MPs have lambasted the travellers’ brazen tactics, which they say makes a ‘mockery’ of the building development rules millions of law-abiding Britons are forced to abide by.
However, those breaching the rules have insisted they are doing it because of the nationwide glut of official sites, and the ‘stigma’ nomadic residents in the traveller and gypsy communities face staying at the road side.
‘We want to make a home where we can raise our children, giving them access to education and medical facilities that we never had growing up, we just want to improve our children’s futures and our families’ living standards,’ one traveller said.
In the space of a few weeks, at least nine ‘illegal’ sites appeared across the UK – all seemingly using a ‘carbon copy’ modus operandi. However, this is feared to be just the tip of the iceberg, with many more having been set up in previous years.
It’s seen those behind the builds carrying out ‘military-style’ operations to rapidly construct new traveller developments before officials can stop them, transforming rural plots of field and grassland into sprawling, concreted caravan parks.
In Devon, a group of suspected travellers launched a blitzkrieg at the start of last week, using diggers and industrial kit to effectively demolish a former pony field in just 24 hours, leaving residents horrified.
‘This is an atrocity… it’s devastated the countryside with absolutely no thought for the harm it will cause,’ one furious 47-year-old woman, who lives locally, previously told the Daily Mail.
‘We feel absolutely powerless right now… It’s one rule for one part of society and another rule for the other.’
A similar development took place on the outskirts of Burtonwood, near Warrington, in Cheshire, when bulldozers, excavators and HGVs took just 72 hours to turn a six-acre field into a large gravel car park over the last May bank holiday.
‘I have never felt so impotent as a councillor in not being able to do something,’ local politician Stuart Mann said. ‘It was a military operation in terms of how [the travellers] achieved it.’
In the Worcestershire village of Hagley, more than a dozen trucks arrived on one field at 3.30am on Good Friday in April, working through the night to turn it into a caravan park, with hard-standing, fencing and even a children’s play area installed.
WEST SUSSEX: At least 10 vehicles, including seven caravans and motorhomes, have pitched up on what has become a building site at Blind Lane, near Petworth
‘We’re scared… we feel absolutely powerless right now,’ one 42-year-old resident told the Daily Mail. ‘Everyone has had to up their security now.
‘All this has happened in the space of 48 hours. They were so fast. I’ve never known anything to happen so fast. It was insane.
‘They arrived at 3.30am. It was non-stop. They arrived with lorry after lorry. Nobody knew what to do. Everyone was calling 101.
‘It’s made everyone feel a little uneasy. People are worried about their safety.’
Sleepy villages dotted around Nottinghamshire have also been targeted. In Balderton, a group of travellers used excavators, diggers and large trucks to flatten a plot of land ‘dangerously close’ to a major high-speed railway line.
The works took place during May’s VE Day bank holiday and was completed in just three days before council officials were able to serve an enforcement notice ordering the remaining construction to be halted.
‘We felt sick. Your stomach drops out,’ one local said. ‘We thought this was our forever home. We love the neighbours – then suddenly they turn up and build a traveller camp on our doorstep. It’s going to reduce the value of properties here.’
A similar development took place a few miles north, between the nearby villages of Weston and Egmanton. A huge 40-pitch caravan site was built over the Easter bank holiday in April without planning permission.
The site, in a field off the A1, was also finished in a few days, with tarmac roads and fences installed. Locals said they had also seen septic tanks sunk, electricity and water illegitimately connected, and key drainage dykes filled to create the site access.
In Buckinghamshire, the rural village of Lee Gate was targeted over the May bank holiday, with diggers levelling a field without permission before five caravans and a static mobile home appeared.
The isolated community is just a few miles away from the former homes of Hollywood A-listers Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, who once owned a property in Gerrards Cross – dubbed the ‘Beverly Hills of Buckinghamshire’.
Other former celebrity neighbours reportedly included the late ‘Prince of Darkness’ Ozzy Osbourne, Oasis mega star Noel Gallagher, and late British TV icon, Cilla Black.
One horrified neighbour, who asked not to be named, found out about the sudden encampment while on holiday in the Canary Islands with his wife.
‘Our neighbour messaged us saying people with diggers, trucks – you name it – had arrived at 5.30am and were carrying out work,’ he said.
‘They just barged through the fence with a digger and built their own gate because the road with shared access to the field was too narrow.
‘When we found out we were horrified. It was absolutely disgusting.
‘Police were there within an hour but they couldn’t do much to stop it.
‘The council put a stop notice there. But the whole area has been flattened, six pitches created. Now we’re stuck with them.’
In the Bedfordshire town of Felmersham, travellers moved onto a field they own in Pavenham Road over the Easter holiday and are now seeking to make it a permanent camp.
Bedfordshire Borough Council served the group with a temporary stop notice which bans them from spreading stones, gravel or tarmac on the land.
The council has since received a retrospective planning application for a change of use of the field, which, if approved, would see five residential pitches for 11 mobile homes and four caravans, parking, groundwork and landscaping.
During the VE Day bank holiday at the start of May a stunning patch of protected West Sussex countryside, in the heart of the South Downs National Park, was devastated by travellers.
The tranquil plot off Blind Lane, in Lurgashall near Petworth, 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.
It’s unclear who was responsible for the unauthorised development. It triggered legal action from Chichester District Council, which served a stop notice ordering all works to cease.
WEST SUSSEX: Aerial views show how the fields were destroyed near Blind Lane, Petworth
Andrew Griffith, Arundel and South Downs MP, was appalled by the unauthorised development and feared it was just one of a series of ‘landgrabs’ taking place nationwide.
‘These are clearly deliberate and meticulously planned operations,’ Mr Griffith, the Conservatives’ Shadow Business and Trade Secretary, told the Mail.
‘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.’
He added: ‘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.’
Across the Sussex border and into Hampshire, the New Forest has also been impacted.
Residents living in the quintessentially British community of Burley lashed out over the summer at the unauthorised development on the outskirts of the village.
Those behind the project have been accused of shamelessly flouting planning rules by paving over part of a field and installing a number of caravans and mobile homes.
It’s led to a months-long row, with one ex-minister raging those behind the scheme should have their ‘civil rights… forfeited’ over the flagrant rule break.
One villager fumed: ‘The travellers have shown complete disregard for the community… It’s a level of disrespect. They have come in and destroyed protected lands without permission.’
HAMPSHIRE: Travellers set up a camp in the heart of the New Forest, at Burley, without permission
The woodland idyll, nestled between Southampton and Bournemouth, is home to about 1,350 people and is heavily reliant on tourism in the summer. It has no railway station, one primary school, a village shop and a sporadic bus service.
Those living there are fiercely protective of their historic home’s unspoilt, natural surroundings and have been left outraged by the gypsy development.
The site, on a former pony field off Ringwood Road, was converted without permission several weeks ago. It’s a stone’s throw away from the luxury Burley Manor hotel, which is a medieval Grade II-listed building.
Those on the camp have since submitted a retrospective planning bid for two static caravans, two touring caravans, parking, bin and cycle stores, e-bike charging points, boundary fencing, and an extension of existing hard-standing. The site is home to two families, who own the land.
Local Tory MP Sir Desmond Swayne was among those who attacked the development, which he said had ‘alarmed’ his constituents.
He added: ‘When you break the law you should forfeit your civil rights. Breaches in the law – even in planning regulations – should not be whipped through on the basis of human rights.’
Speaking of the latest alleged land-grab this week, Guildford Borough Council said a planning application has been submitted for the site ‘which is yet to be validated’.
‘If this application is validated and accepted, we will contact nearby residents to make them aware, and they will have the opportunity to submit their views on the application before any decision is made,’ a spokeswoman added.
Councillor Matthew Furniss, who is Bramley’s representative at Surrey County Council, insisted he would continue to press the borough council on the issue.
The Tory politician, who is the county’s highways and transportation boss, added Surrey Highways Enforcement had also been alert to the newly-built access road to the site and would be assessing.
‘It is always disappointing when some individuals choose to work outside the planning process and I will be pressing both Councils for a quick resolution,’ he told the Daily Mail.
A spokesman for Surrey Police added: ‘Officers responded to reports of an incident near Unstead Lane on Saturday, September 13, at around 12.30pm.
‘After conducting initial enquiries, it was deemed to not require any police action.’
