Similar thing happened with a guy I used to know back in Essex.
The man had land out Canvey way, and a bunch of gypsy squatters moved in. First year was a gimme, as he wasn't prepared for it - it was an empty field, so there wasn't anything in particular to secure, but once they were in, the police refused to remove them, and by the time they'd finished conducting industrial clearances in his area and departed, the land was uninhabitable, so the council forced him to pay for the cleanup. The next year the gypsies came, there was a substantial fence and gate, so they dismantled the gate hinges, same again, same refusal to remove, same fines and fees to clear up the land.
The year after that, he'd put in a four-foot-high earth berm to keep their vehicles out so they couldn't dump industrial waste on his land. The gypsies responded by stealing a bulldozer and clearing the berm out of the way.
After that - three years in a row of endless expense - he sold the land.
That's so shit, typical council bollocks as well, I'd be going to war with the local government over that sort of thing and I wouldn't even care because it's one thing when they trespass with crappy security it's another when they do criminal damage on top of trespass just to get in.
The bit that got me was the council in question didn't even follow up about the theft of the bulldozer. That's how completely cowed they were by the squatters.
I have to wonder if it's not a deliberate scheme by the council to land grab, have squatters move in, fake ignorance until the land owner finally gives up and sells. Then they snap up the land at a cheap price as people decide it's worthless so they can build on it or some other bollocks. That's the sort of shady shit the UK government does all the time because these types of squatters have to come from somewhere and if they're in a group it makes it all the more suspicious to me.
What foreigners don't realise about the UK is they can pretty much seize your land even if you're the legal owner at any time, they just need the right justification for it and of course they're the ones who invent the rules for that.
Similar thing happened with a guy I used to know back in Essex.
The man had land out Canvey way, and a bunch of gypsy squatters moved in. First year was a gimme, as he wasn't prepared for it - it was an empty field, so there wasn't anything in particular to secure, but once they were in, the police refused to remove them, and by the time they'd finished conducting industrial clearances in his area and departed, the land was uninhabitable, so the council forced him to pay for the cleanup. The next year the gypsies came, there was a substantial fence and gate, so they dismantled the gate hinges, same again, same refusal to remove, same fines and fees to clear up the land.
The year after that, he'd put in a four-foot-high earth berm to keep their vehicles out so they couldn't dump industrial waste on his land. The gypsies responded by stealing a bulldozer and clearing the berm out of the way.
After that - three years in a row of endless expense - he sold the land.
That's so shit, typical council bollocks as well, I'd be going to war with the local government over that sort of thing and I wouldn't even care because it's one thing when they trespass with crappy security it's another when they do criminal damage on top of trespass just to get in.
The bit that got me was the council in question didn't even follow up about the theft of the bulldozer. That's how completely cowed they were by the squatters.
I have to wonder if it's not a deliberate scheme by the council to land grab, have squatters move in, fake ignorance until the land owner finally gives up and sells. Then they snap up the land at a cheap price as people decide it's worthless so they can build on it or some other bollocks. That's the sort of shady shit the UK government does all the time because these types of squatters have to come from somewhere and if they're in a group it makes it all the more suspicious to me.
What foreigners don't realise about the UK is they can pretty much seize your land even if you're the legal owner at any time, they just need the right justification for it and of course they're the ones who invent the rules for that.