Enforcement action will soon be issued by the council ordering travellers to stop living in fourteen caravan plots.

Earlier this year retrospective planning permission to change the use of land on Roydon Lodge Chalet Estate was rejected by Epping Forest District Council.

Having been set up as a seasonal holiday park in the inter-war years, the cabins have since been updated and used as homes all year round.

When permission was sought, Roydon Parish Council was quick to make its objections known.

Its application read: "The only access route to the chalet estate is via the village green – the unmade track, which forms part of the green itself, is unsuitable for the volume and type of vehicles now using it, all year round.

"The village green is in the village conservation area and it is very difficult and challenging for the Parish Council to reconcile the maintenance of the track and the requirements of the conservation area, with its current usage.

"It is unreasonable for residents, through their local taxes, to have to pay for the increased upkeep of the village green as a result of activity on the estate."

In addition to such concerns, the parish council suggested human waste had been pumped from the site into the River Stort.

Although there is a predicted need for a further 38 caravan pitches in the district over the next 15 years, because prevision has been made for these in the Local Plan and because the site is on the Green Belt, permission was legally refused.

Now Epping Forest District Council is looking to take enforcement action demanding that the 14 caravans are no longer lived in as permanent dwellings.

It is unclear whether such notice will have the desired impact however.

William Doherty received four enforcement notices from the district council in the six years after he moved in to the lodge in 2008, only one of which was upheld.

It is also unclear from the refused planning documents where the occupants will move to.

These include Thomas Moran and Catherine Kennedy, who spent the past five years on caravan sites and roadside camps across England, finally settling in the Lodge after Fernhill in Harlow proved to be in too poor a condition.