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After many years, where Maylands Field was owned by a company that was bankrupt, and was not used, apart from by local residents, the land, a twenty acre site running alongside the River Ingrebourne, with Maylands Way, Harold Park at one end, the A12 running alongside, has now been bought by new owners. Late December 2002, they started to destroy all the shrubs on the land, and took out a lot of trees, both by the river, and from the woods at the car wash end. It looked like a deliberate attempt because of the timing of the damage to avoid authority involvement. The reaction of the foreman was also quite aggressive, saying that the owner would put travellers on if 'he got pi**ed off enough with the residents', and no-one would pass a message to the owner. Some local residents printed up some leaflets, with a web site address with contact numbers for the council etc. They were snowed under with demands for action, and quite quickly a tree preservation order was put on. The Romford Recorder then ran an article quoting one of the councillors who had contact with travellers, saying the word in the community was for the site to be cleared and travellers being able to move on to the site, which just confirmed the worst fears of the local community. These fears, bearing in mind the situation locally re Noak Hill, Basildon, Thurrock, Upminster where exactly these kind of unauthorised sites have appeared. Local residents then had a local meeting at Harold Park Baptist Church where over 300 people turned up, with 100 locked out. Pete Butler, from FOE, Councillor Kelly and Angela Watkinson MP also attended. It turned out there were no rights of way to the field. The field was also only designated as of borough wide environmental importance, even though it had a vibrant water vole population, plus other species, so there are limits to environmental regards. Counsellor Kelly that explained what the council had done and how they were now in negotiation with the 'owner' or 'contractor' depending upon who you talk to in the council. The negotiations are over: (1) the caravans on the car wash site, where people are living illegally (2) the fence on the A12, which is outside of the owners land (3) the piling up of all of the shrubs, trees and rubbish, outside of his land, and right against peoples garden fences (4) also, the roadway (A12) has access points which were supposedly going to be raised by the transport people. But he also made it plain that the car wash was not illegal, and that until he laid tarmac, or moved people on there was little that could be done apart from addressing the concerns of (1) - (4) above. Angela Watkinson also then explained how under European Human Rights legislation if people moved onto the land it was very difficult to get them off under family rights rules, and if anyone there needed medical treatment, the same problem. There was then an area meeting at Redden Court School, where Maylands came up on the agenda, but no time was allowed for anymore than minimal questioning by Maylands people, which caused a lot of anger, and again hit the front page of the Harold Recorder, the chairman said he was unprepared for this degree of interest, obviously the council don't talk to each other very much. Details of the next residents meeting is about to be issued, and will be flyered to all of the local houses.