of the site with the help of Robert Home, a professor of land management from Anglia Ruskin University. Home also claimed that although it was in the Green Belt, even 30 years ago the area was described as mixed use. In the 1990s, the council ceded limited permission to the Gypsy families adjoining Dale Farm, before deciding against granting further permissions as other parts of the site were occupied. Traveller William Saunders won permission for himself and other family members at the adjacent Oak Lane site after a lengthy legal tussle with Basildon Council from 1987. A planning application by travellers for a 20-pitch site was submitted in 2001, but was refused by the council. Two Irish travellers, Patrick Egan and John Sheridan, and a third man purchased the cottage and the green fields around it from Mr Bocking for £120,000 in 2002. The local residents reported a clear difference between the behaviour of the English Gypsies and the Irish travellers. Around that time more Irish travellers began to arrive and the Gypsies decided to move on. At this time unplanned development started. The site quickly expanded from eight plots to more than 30 by 2003. New residents who moved on to the site did not obtain planning permission for their caravans and chalets. Various planning breaches were reported. The Council has said that planning applications for the caravans and chalets on the site were rejected because the land was Green Belt. Basildon Council first served enforcement notices in 2001 and the Traveller families brought legal action. The enforcement notices ordered that the land be restored to its original state. The Travellers residing there applied for retrospective planning permission, prompting a series of public inquiries. Each of these ruled that the site was illegal. A temporary order was granted in 2003 by the then Secretary of State, John Prescott which allowed residents two years before eviction. In reference to this, the government's Communities and Local Government department, in their report on Site Provision and Enforcement for Gypsies and Travellers, in, wrote:The site has a long and contentious planning history. Temporary permission was granted by the Secretary of State ... with the intention that this would give the site residents and the local authority time to find a suitable alternative site. However, no such progress has been made, and the local authority has now received a homelessness application for the 400