people who claim that eviction from the site will leave them homeless. At the same time, opposition amongst parts of the settled community towards site residents has become ever fiercer, with parents from the settled community withdrawing their children from the school attended by children from Dale Farm, and the view regularly expressed in letters to the local press that Gypsies and Travellers living on the site are somehow 'above the law'. The site continued to expand, and the Travellers residing there applied for a judicial review of the eviction decision. Basildon Council's Development Control Committee minutes state that: "In June 2005, once the two-year compliance period had lapsed, the Council resolved that direct action was necessary to secure compliance with the notices. It was this decision (reconsidered in December 2007) that was then made the subject of Judicial Review proceedings, which were heard in February 2008." The Traveller residents won this decision in the High Court in May 2008, only to see it overturned by the Court of Appeal at the beginning of 2010. In 2008, Essex County Council's Racial Equality Council funded a £12,000 community centre at the site, built without planning permission. The Dale Farm Travellers An article in the local newspaper, the Echo, quotes an English Romany Gypsy, Joe Jones, that the site was first stopped at by Travelling families during the 1970s. The article reported that residents of the nearby village claim the "influx" of Irish Travellers which followed in 2001–2002 caused a rise in conflict with the "settled community" and that most of the "English Travellers" to have subsequently "sold up as they are said not to mix" with the Irish Travellers. In 2002 a land dispute allegedly led to the death by shooting of Billy Williams, for which Oak Lane Traveller Paul Saunders was found innocent. Ownership of the unauthorised portion appeared to rest with the Sheridan family of Travellers. Richard Sheridan is the chairman of the Dale Farm Housing Association. He is also a former chair of the British Gypsy Council (GCECWCR). A reporter for the Echo claimed that some Travellers are linked to driveway surfacing in continental Europe, and door to door sales of electrical goods in Australia and Iceland, some of a "dangerous or counterfeit" nature. The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that "new evidence has emerged" that some residents have cultural roots in the town of Rathkeale, County Limerick, Ireland,