Reduced to a fetid rubbish dump... how our once glorious Olympic park has been desecrated by fly-tipping travellers
IF you ever wondered what could happen when someone offers to take away your rubbish dirt cheap, take a good long look at this mess.
Travellers occupied a building plot near the Olympic Park not just to live there – but to use as an illegal waste tip. Theyto pick then up chargedtheir garbage householdersand dumped it at the site – brazenly flytipping on an epic scale. Broken furniture, plastic sheeting, household appliances, soil and all sorts of trash piled up on the plot in Stratford, east London.
group Chris at Clark, work 61, while watched employedthe as a plumber on an adjacent block. ‘A lot of what they’ve been dumping is household rubbish, stuff like that – it’s a huge pile,’ he said. ‘I’ve been here for about three weeks and you could see the travellers bringing the rubbish along, dumping it and then going away again. They were obviously picking up rubbish from elsewhere.
‘They wouldn’t have brought it with them and there’s not a chance it’s just their waste. It looks like people are paying them to take rubbish away and this is where they’re tipping it.’
He took photos of the caravans on site shortly before they were moved on. They had been operating out of about 20 caravans and other vehicles.
A spokesman for the London Legacy Development Corporation, which is responsible for the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, confirmed travellers ‘had been illegally occupying a housing development site’ since August 24. The corporation obtained High Court permission to remove them and officers supported by police enforced the order last Wednesday. ‘We have taken back possession of the site, which is under licence to a developer, from the illegal occupiers.’ The site is soon to be transformed by Balfour Beatty into a residential neighbourhood of more than 800 homes. A spokesman said: ‘The site where the illegal rubbish tip has been left is currently under licence to Balfour Beatty who will be responsible for the removal of the waste.’