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In the once peaceful parish of Horne, Surrey, the thunder of bulldozers and tipper trucks down its winding country roads has become a depressingly familiar din.
The residents know what is to come: the rumble of machinery signals that yet another traveller camp is about to be established on a field or former farmland near them, usually without planning permission.
The land is ripped up, hardstanding laid, drainage installed and caravan pitches marked out - all before the council has even noticed.
Typically, the travellers have already bought the land and the building work starts on a Friday evening as Surrey County Council closes for the weekend, thereby effectively giving the new arrivals free reign to do what they want unchallenged until Monday (or Tuesday, if it is a Bank Holiday).
By then the former green site is despoiled and the 'landgrab' difficult to reverse.
Tortuous, costly and lengthy planning and legal battles may follow, with the council issuing temporary 'stop and enforcement' notices while the travellers apply for retrospective planning permission.
They then often appeal if such planning is refused, and sometimes invoke Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, to 'private and family life'.
Their apparent disregard for the upset they cause towards the villagers of Horne was summed up by one balaclava-wearing traveller who, according to locals the Daily Mail spoke to this week, curtly told one homeowner who dared to question what they were doing: 'We've got families just like you - we've got to live somewhere.'
The rural parish of Horne - an otherwise charming little corner of Surrey with a population of around 950 where a temporary airbase was set up in 1944 in preparation for D-Day - certainly seems to be somewhere that is popular with travellers.
At least six camps have appeared without planning permission in recent months, with three different caravan sites only 300ft from each other - and homeowners say they now feel 'outnumbered'.
To give a snapshot of just how bad things have got, the recently formed Horne Residents Association, set up in a bid to counter what frustrated and increasingly disgruntled locals refer to as the 'traveller invasion', has produced a map highlighting 14 traveller sites in an area around 2.5 miles wide in and around their parish, most of which appeared in the last two years.
The most recent case came last month, when unauthorised work began on a site at East Park Farm.
'They arrived on the Thursday, took the topsoil off, and put drainage in,' said one horrified homeowner.
'People started moving in on the Friday. There were at least 100 drops by big tippers. It's about an eight-acre site and they marked out 18 pitches.'
On this occasion, partly thanks to the vigilance of residents, Tandridge District Council obtained a High Court interim injunction on the Saturday, September 13, which prevented further development of the site without planning permission.
Breaching such an injunction can lead to contempt of court proceedings, which can result in imprisonment.
But for some in Horne - where stunning barn conversions, country houses worth up to £1million, pretty Victorian cottages and listed buildings are dotted about the winding roads - even such tough action is not enough to convince them that their bucolic existence can be preserved against what some call an 'invasion'.
Such is their desperation there has even been talk of using horseboxes and tractors to barricade roads to stop more travellers arriving if they get wind of them heading to more new sites.
'We're law-abiding people, hardworking people, not the sort to take the law into our own hands,' one resident said.
'It would be totally out of character for us. But it's an indication of people's fear, how they they're trying to think of ways to take control when they feel totally powerless.'
The resident added: 'The travellers seem to be coming from all over. I think word has got out our area is a soft spot.
'They seem very organised. They know all the loopholes, the legals, the buzzwords, the things they need to do to get what they want. But for us residents, it's unclear what we can do to stop it.
'Some elderly residents are afraid to use footpaths because they've been spoken to by the travellers in a way they don't feel comfortable with.'
As emotions have been simmering, Catherine Sayer, the leader of Tandridge District Council, which is controlled by the Residents' Alliance composed of independent councillors, warned last month that the continued construction of unauthorised sites in Surrey could spark 'serious unrest'.
She told the Mail this week: 'Unauthorised caravan and static mobile home sites have been appearing across Tandridge District with increasing regularity.
'This repeated pattern of behaviour in some parts of the district such as Horne is causing great anxiety for nearby residents.
'By contrast, any resident wanting to extend their home or build an extra dwelling has to submit and pay for a planning application and only if permission is granted, can they carry out development.'
She added that dealing with the unauthorised sites was a 'complicated, expensive and lengthy process' but she was committed to using 'every legal and planning power available to the council to address this unacceptable situation.'
Unauthorised sites are, of course, by no means confined to Tandridge, and have long been occurring across Surrey and elsewhere in the country, although Ms Sayer acknowledges that because much of Tandridge is rural 'it has become a major issue for this council'.
The council says that it has in the last three months 'served five temporary stop notices and two interim injunctions on sites in this particular area' and also 'refused one application for retrospective permission for gypsy and traveller site'.
In cases where camps have been permitted, some have been granted because there was previously developed land, or the land was assessed to be Grey Belt, defined as land in the Green Belt comprising previously developed land.
For some in Horne, the shattering of their once tranquil existence by the arrival of travellers and its replacement with fear and uncertainty has prompted a desire to up sticks and move away.
One resident, who has recently put his three-bedroom home on the market for nearly £100,000 less (around 20 per cent) than it was valued at 'pre-invasion', said: 'I used to look out over lovely green fields - now my view is caravans, mobile homes and hardcore.
They're on the Green Belt. They're despoiling what was a green and pleasant land. It's devaluing property and I don't know if mine will sell. Who wants to look at a caravan site?'
The resident, who like all those the Mail spoke to this week did not wish to be identified in case speaking out made them a target for 'aggression' or 'intimidation', added: 'There are 12 traveller sites within two miles of my house. It's shocking, it's destroying the countryside and it's not playing by the rules.
'If I flouted the planning rules like they do, the planners would be down on me like a ton of bricks. The council issues enforcement notices on sites telling them to stop work or remove things but the travellers often seem to ignore them.'
Others the Mail spoke to told of case of homeowners 'being forced to move hot tubs by a metre because they breached planning' and alterations to listed buildings 'taking 20 years of jumping through hoops to get permission and costing thousands'.
Sir Jeremy Hunt, the Conservative MP for Godalming and Ash and former Chancellor, recently called for action to be taken against 'unauthorised encampments' in Surrey after several traveller sites were built without permission on Green Belt land across the county.
'It is absolutely infuriating to see the law being ignored this way - and the people who do it getting away scot-free,' he said, while warning that 'drawn-out' enforcement processes risked 'consuming vast amounts of council time and money, while the local community continues to suffer the consequences.'
Friends, Family and Travellers - a charity that 'works to end racism and discrimination against Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people and to protect the nomadic way of life' - claims not enough has been done by councils to find permanent sites for these individuals, with too many families 'stuck in limbo'.
Last year, new planning policy announced by the then Labour deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, in a shake-up of planning laws, allowed for the possibility of development of travellers sites on Green Belt land under exceptional circumstances where councils cannot guarantee a long-term supply of available land.
It means local authorities are under pressure to maintain a five-year supply of deliverable sites to meet the needs of their local gypsy and traveller populations. Failure to meet this requirement can activate a 'presumption in favour of sustainable development', meaning planning applications for traveller sites are more likely to be approved.
Back in Horne, another fed-up resident this week said: 'We moved here from London during Covid. We were surprised by how friendly the neighbours were and delighted by the community events like Christmas carols and county shows. You put out a WhatsApp message saying you're taking down a shed and three people with a tractor turn up to help you. You don't get that in a city.
'I've recently been made redundant, and we were looking to downsize, but the moment a traveller camp arrived near us it made my mind up. We have beautiful views of fields, but it gets to the point where you start thinking: "That's a prime site for someone to put a caravan on" - and that terrifies us.
'We wanted a bucolic life. We didn't realise there'd be a constant fear that travellers are going to pitch up. It's terrible.'