In the early hours of Bank Holiday Monday, Nina Johnson-Marshall, a senior planning enforcement officer, was given a ‘blue-light’ police escort through the highways and byways of Hertfordshire.
In her possession was a High Court injunction which had just been issued, out of hours, by a duty judge.
The destination was Sawbridgeworth, a genteel market town near Bishop’s Stortford, which had been invaded by travellers over the weekend. The all-too familiar incursion received extensive media coverage.
Few outside this small corner of Hertfordshire, however, will be aware of the drama – reminiscent of a scene from a film – involving Ms Johnson-Marshall and her race against the clock to serve the injunction.
The travellers had already covered the plot of greenbelt land, a habitat for wildlife, with hardcore and were planning to occupy the site permanently with mobile homes and caravans.
Had this happened they would probably still be there today, having applied for retrospective planning permission and exploiting every loophole in the human rights legislation playbook.
The law is overwhelmingly on their side. Residents in other parts of the country will bear testament to this.
Not this time.
Police cars arrived at the site in Sawbridgeworth at 12.30am on Bank Holiday Monday, where diggers had begun work on the land
A concrete base had been laid on the site alongside fencing over the bank holiday weekend
Planning enforcement officer Nina Johnson-Marshall arrived by car at the site at 12.30am with a High Court injunction following a ‘blue-light’ police escort through Hertfordshire
At precisely 12.30am on August 31, when Ms Johnson-Marshall arrived in Sawbridgeworth accompanied by a police patrol car and posted a copy of the injunction on the newly erected wooden perimeter fence of the as-yet-uninhabited encampment, what until then had been a civil case became a matter for the police.
The order gave officers at the scene the power of arrest if there was further ‘development’ on the grassland next to Sheering Mill Lane, and prohibited ‘the occupation of any caravans, vehicles or mobile homes’.
These were some of the wide-ranging restrictions imposed by the judge following a campaign by residents who blocked the entry to the site.
One of the main reasons for his decision was because he heard that someone on the encampment had used an offensive term to describe a Jewish protester, who was then told menacingly: ‘I am going to follow you home and burn your house down.’
Those who did not comply with the order were warned they could be held in ‘contempt of court’ and be ‘imprisoned, or fined’ or their ‘assets may be seized’.
At 9am, before the unwelcome visitors had time to install their accommodation, the area was cleared, without incident, by the police, to the cheers and applause of locals who watched the convoy of vans and trucks with heavy machinery leave the area.
‘All gone,’ announced Greg Rattey, a local councillor and a former mayor of Sawbridgeworth, on Facebook. ‘What a fantastic united community we are. Well done everyone.’
Behind this almost unprecedented victory – it’s hard to remember such a successful legal outcome elsewhere – is the inspiring story of how the good people of Sawbridgeworth, known locally as ‘Sawbo’, mobilised to save their town from the scourge of those travellers who have blighted communities with threatening, intimidatory and anti-social behaviour.
One day they really might make a movie or TV special about it. There is already an obvious title: The Battle of Sheering Mill Lane.
Surely Nina Johnson-Marshall, from East Hertfordshire District Council, would get a leading role. How many provincial planning officials have been ‘blue-lighted’ in the line of duty?
The real stars of the saga, though, are the law-abiding taxpayers of Sawbridgeworth, which has a population of just over 10,000, and was best known, until now at least, for its links with the world of celebrity.
‘Beckingham Palace’, the former country estate of David and Victoria Beckham, is located here and Sir Rod Stewart and his wife Penny Lancaster, who live a little over a mile away, have been spotted walking along the quaint streets of the town with shops such as Christine’s (‘traditional home baking’), The House of Harlequin Boutique (‘ladies fashion & accessories’) and Violets Floral Designs.
In this genteel setting, it was incongruous to see the ‘site manager’ – a bare-chested, tattooed man drinking a can of beer.
He and his ilk underestimated the grit and spirit of the opposition in Sawbridgeworth.
Almost within minutes of lorries arriving with diggers and hardcore at the start of the bank holiday break last Friday, when workmen began excavating, installing fencing, and felling trees on the site, the alarm was sounded on WhatsApp and Facebook and a very middle-class protest swung into action.
Soon hundreds of residents were manning the ‘front line’ in Sheering Mill Lane. Prosecco was served along with teas and coffees and cakes. There was music and even a ‘pub quiz’ at 4am.
Many camped out overnight in five-hour shifts.
Among those who answered the call was a Girl Guides leader, a semi-retired City worker with his ‘Westie’ highland terrier Bianca and 72-year-old retired postmistress Margaret Shields.
At the same time, a crack team of litigation lawyers, including a barrister lauded by industry bible Legal 500, was assembled by the local authority, which described the operation as a ‘masterclass in effective collaboration’ between the community and the council.
All in the space of 72 hours over the bank holiday when town halls are shut. Hence the reason why so many ‘land grabs’ occur during this period.
The site was previously a wildlife-rich floodplain next to a rare chalk stream
Police officers at the site, standing near a caravan parked at the wildlife haven
‘We cannot let these travellers do what they want,’ was the battle cry from a resolute Ms Shields.
‘If we don’t stand up to them, then who will?’
It has not come without cost, however. The land, a wildlife-rich floodplain next to a rare chalk stream, which attracts muntjac deer, has been all but destroyed and will require a small fortune to restore to its natural state.
The question residents are now asking is: who ‘sold out’ Sawbridgeworth?
Two men – Leonard Richards and Darren Glover – were named on the injunction, along with ‘persons unknown’, as the registered owners of the two parcels of land at the site, but the legal papers also make it clear that ‘one or both’ may ‘ultimately be removed as defendants’ because the Land Registry hasn’t been updated.
So exactly who owns the land, and who is responsible for selling the grassland to travellers remains unclear.
Mr Richards, 55, who lives in Dunmow, Essex, acquired his plot for £20,000 in 2003 and runs a successful driveway and road surfacing company.
Town councillors described him as a ‘reputable businessman’ whose firm has been used by the authority itself.
Mr Richards said that after taking legal advice he was unable to comment.
Mr Glover, for his part, bought his share of the site, where the majority of the hardcore is understood to have been laid, for £150,000 in December 2023, the Daily Mail has established.
He confirmed, when contacted, that he had sold the land ‘a year to 18 months ago... through word of mouth and a little bit of advertising’.
Mr Glover, from Basildon, added: ‘A police officer rang me over the encampment. I said the land was not mine any more and I hadn’t a clue what was going on.’
He buys land ‘now and again’, he said, as an investment but would have to check who the buyers were in this case with his solicitor.
Mr Glover didn’t get back to us with an answer.
Will the ‘Battle of Sheering Mill Lane’ set a precedent in the case of future ‘land grabs’?
What makes the Sawbridgeworth campaign so impressive is that it succeeded in the face of the law as it currently stands.
Four heavy-duty diggers and a caravan parked in one of five plots of line created by fencing
A JCB digger parked inside wooden fencing used to divide the site into plots of land
Evidence – including witness statements, site photos, proof of land ownership – has to be collected in an almost impossibly short space of time to satisfy a duty judge that the situation is so serious that enforcement action cannot wait until the next day.
Local Labour MP Josh Dean raised the issue with Andy Burnham on his first day in the Commons as Prime Minister.
‘Thanks to our community’s exceptional response, East Herts Council was able to move quickly and secure an injunction,’ Mr Dean told the House. ‘But across the country, this is sadly the exception and not the rule.’
He has asked for a meeting with the PM to discuss ‘why we need to change the law to ensure police and local authorities have the right powers’.
Those powers are sadly lacking at the moment.
The Catch-22 at the heart of the ‘land grab’ scandal is that the sites which travellers occupy have invariably been legally purchased so they cannot be removed for trespassing.
And ‘stop notices’, if the recent past is anything to go by, are not worth the paper they are written on. They are routinely ignored without consequence. Police simply have a ‘watching brief’ in these circumstances to ensure there is no disorder.
The bottom line is that councils are effectively powerless to do anything in the vast majority of cases.
A ‘stop notice’ was flagrantly ignored in Sawbridgeworth but the crucial difference here was the size of the protest in Sheering Mill Lane, prompting the police to seal off the single-track 20mph road at one point, which largely prevented anyone from bringing caravans on to the site and bought time for an injunction to be obtained.
That, and the willingness of the community to come together and mobilise quickly.
The first signs of the invasion were spotted last Friday by the aforementioned owner of Bianca the ‘Westie’.
I bumped into him near his home after Sawbridgeworth returned to normality. The 68-year-old asked to remain anonymous because he and his wife, he said, had been ‘threatened and abused’ by travellers (residents spoke of those who made ‘gun fingers’ and throat-slitting gestures) who deliberately parked trucks and cars outside his home and those of fellow protesters.
His suspicions were aroused when he saw a truck heading towards the site. He alerted a councillor who was also a neighbour and they went to investigate.
A ‘workman’ they encountered at the scene insisted only a small section of the pavement was going to be tarmacked.
‘You’re having a laugh,’ the pensioner told him before becoming a stalwart on the ‘front line’.
The protest was expertly coordinated, with residents performing different roles.
‘My time was best spent disrupting their supply chain,’ he said. One of the firms in question was Harlow Fencing.
‘We were led to believe the site was a legitimate new-build development and supplied materials in good faith,’ the company said on social media.
‘As soon as concerns were brought to our attention, we stopped all further deliveries.’
Meanwhile, business manager Alex Williams, 45, was involved in mobilising support using Facebook and WhatsApp, where the opposition swelled to 700.
‘People power is the only way to stop these developments,’ he said.
He’s right, unfortunately, because councils are unlikely to be given the badly needed new powers they need any time soon.
- Additional reporting: Isaac Crowson and Tim Stewart