Dale Farm is a plot of land situated on Oak Lane in Crays Hill, Essex, United Kingdom. Until October 2011, it was the site of one of the largest Traveller concentrations in the UK, at its height housing over 1,000 people, along with the adjacent Oak Land site. Although Basildon District Council had granted permission for the site to be used by a small number of Traveller families, no planning permission was given for the expansion of the site into land located within the Green Belt. The establishment of the illegal plots led to Basildon District Council conducting a ten-year legal battle in the High Court to gain a clearance order to evict the Travellers from Dale Farm. The decision to bring in police officers to remove some activists and residents from the site and give safe access to the contracted bailiffs gained international press coverage, with the overall eviction costing the council £4.8 million. Dale Farm Dale Farm is a six-acre plot of land on Oak Lane, near the A127 Southend Arterial road. Dale Farm has been subject to Green Belt controls since 1982. Next to the Dale Farm site there is an authorised Travellers' site known as Oak Lane. This has council planning permission, and provides 34 legal pitches. Dale Farm cottage was leased to Ray Bocking, a scrap metal dealer in the early 1960s, who lived at the Dale Farm cottage. Land in the north-east corner was used as a scrap yard without planning permission until 2001. Mr Bocking said that the Dale Farm site "was originally concreted over by Basildon Council". Basildon council deny this, although a contractor who worked for the previous owner said, "Basildon council regularly brought waste tarmac and rubble from roadworks and dumped it on Dale Farm for a period of 10 years until the 1990s." Basildon Council says "it served enforcement notices against [him] in 1992 and 1994 and council contractors did not put down any hardstanding on the farm." Eventually Bocking was bankrupted by costs arising from breaching the Green Belt provisions. The council rejected his bid for permission to continue his business in 1996. During the 1970s, 40 English Romani Gypsy families were allowed to live beside the scrap yard. As a site for Travellers, Dale Farm was started in the 1980s when a planning appeal was won by two families against Basildon District Council on the southern end