BASILDON Council has failed to recover a single penny from travellers it evicted from Dale Farm three years ago.

The massive operation in October 2011 cost taxpayers around £7million, including police, council, fire and health service costs.

The council is the only authority that insisted it would try to recover its £4million share of the bill.

It has a six-year window to recover the money, but although it has registered legal charges against the land so travellers cannot sell it without the council being notified, it has yet to make any demands for payment.

David McPherson-Davis, a Ramsden Crays parish councillor who campaigned for the eviction, said: “I don’t understand why they always seem to take so long with everything. The money should be recovered.

It is taxpayer’s money and we are not talking about a small amount.

“The parish council has a meeting with the council next month about the Dale Farm situation and this will be brought up. There are other plots of land in the borough that some of the people from Dale Farm own so we will want to know if the council has charges against these as well.”

The Dale Farm site was split into about 50 individual plots of land and the owners are facing differing bills depending on the amount of work involved to clear them.

The highest debtors are John Sheridan, from the site in Oak Lane, who faces the biggest bill of £356,600.

He bought the whole of Dale Farm from scrap dealer Ray Bocking for £125,000 before splitting it up for sale to other travellers.

Patrick Egan, who runs a home improvement firm and owns land where five of the illegal pitches were along with the Dale Farm cottage which gives the site its name, faces the second biggest bill, of £181,694.

A charge has also been served on the still occupied cottage that Mr Egan bought for £60,000 in 2004.

A council spokesman said: “We undertook a major piece of work to apportion the costs to different titles. We then applied to register local land charge entries at the land registry to protect the council’s financial interest.

This was challenged legally but the council was successful and we have registered entries against all titles where action was taken.

“The council intends to pursue every avenue available to recover outstanding monies. However, at this stage the council has not taken any additional debt recovery acton, but has protected the council’s position by imposing charges on the land.”