Caravans or chalets? The legal absurdities of Dale Farm

Not it seems, the busiest day in London’s high court – particularly in the 2 o’clock post-lunch period.

Or in my case a quick sandwich among the clientele in the high court cafe. And there, a tad more colour than normal among the sober suits and wing-collars supping their Costa lattes.

For the women of Dale Farm were up in court in force. Some serious tans – real or fake – and major gold bling on display as they awaited today’s judgement.

Curiously, the judge Mr Edwards-Stuart, had only just got under way reading out his judgement when half of them began piling out of Court No 4.

It being a creaky old place at the best of times, this was a noisy interruption. But m’lud appears to have come to expect such things and ploughed gamely on through the by-ways of the Town and Country Planning Act section x subsection y.

“I think it’s the coach party,” said the woman next to me (herself a traveller) by way of explanation. I was nonplussed.

Picture gallery: the Dale Farm legal battle

The judge has no illusions that this monumental issue is not without its absurdities for all the potential gravity of a community facing eviction and taxpayers facing a large bill.

Take the caravan. Or is it a chalet? In law. Ever stopped to ponder this? Thought not. But this is the very meat and drink of Court 4 right now.  I think I heard the judge mention The Caravan’s Act and it comes down to how big your caravan is. Within the meaning of the Act. Subsection D2.

Wearily, it seems initial measurements by Team Travellers might have been, ahem, somewhat generous. The lawyer for Team Taxpayer was sanguine. The judge looked at him and said: “Well perhaps it seems that your overview measurements are, well, a little better than the chap on the ground with the ruler.”

For this, my lord, is what it’s come down to after ten years of legal wrangling, possible UN intervention and anything up to £18m in costs to Essex County Council: the man with the vague “ruler” measuring vans, walls and hard-standings on one hand and a council apparently unable to refine its Enforcement Notices on the other.

So, said the judge, every plot owner on site now has to make a written submission proving when they built their house and/or wall and/or gate.

“I suspect it’s highly unlikely there’ll be any receipts,” smiled the judge, indicating he’s absorbed a thing or twenty about traveller micro-economics and town-planning.

“But perhaps,” he continued, hitting his stride, “you know, maybe something was put up the same year as someone’s confirmation or something,” and suddenly Irish Catholic travelling culture was sneaking into the dusty case-law of English planning.

But he was even-handed in delivering what was something of a score-draw today. At one point, admonishing Team Traveller not to get all cocky about a stay of execution and one with potentially weird outcomes: “The practical consequences,” he said, “may not be quite as rosy as may at first be thought. There is not much consolation in being allowed to keep your fence but not your home.”

And that, indeed, is what it could come to now as both sides go away and look at every fence, wall, hardstanding and caravan (or is that chalet?) and see if each one conforms to the letter of the Enforcement Notice.

It’s all a tad mad. And terribly British. And the judge knows it. At the opening of today’s hearing it was disclosed that a new man had joined one of the legal teams stuck in this morass: “Oh lucky him,” said the judge.

They don’t hang ’em at the high court – but there’s something redolent of gallows humour, up there on the bench.

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