We live in a high risk Flood Zone 3 which has gradually been eroded to such a degree by heavy industrial expansion that we were left with a tiny parcel of undeveloped floodplain land directly adjacent to the rear of 15 terraced homes and gardens.

Not only did this small parcel of land afford us valuable flood protection, it also created a visual barrier between residential and complete heavy industrial encroachment through a number of mature trees on the land.

A small fraction of the land had previously been fly-tipped on and, although Erewash Borough Council publicly pledges on its website to make such offenders accountable, and despite being in full possession of the perpetrator's name and address, it was unable to remedy the situation as it was on private land and "did not constitute a health hazard". This fly tipping contained soiled matresses, used nappies, asbestos and hypodermic needles.

The whole stinking eyesore was left to rot down and colonise until suddenly 5 years and four months later Erewash Borough Council suddenly and unexpectedly declared this colonised mound to "be a health hazard" and "in the interests of residential amenity" cleared this debris into a huge mound ready for removal.

All the residents saw an opportunity to improve this area by voluntarily clearing the remaining overgrowth with the intention of additional tree planting for the benefit of all the home owners, and we all worked on a voluntary basis at our own cost to do this. I recall at this stage that Erewash Borough Council was also heavily promoting 'Pride in the Community' through 'Greening our Communities' and a load of spiel over how valuable community efforts were towards improving the environment.

We staked out and clearly marked the original boundaries of this land which appeared to be unregistered and without a traceable owner - so far so good!

The following day when all the residents were conveniently at work and at exactly the same time as Erewash Borough Council was after five years finally taking the debris away "in the interests of residential amenity", our industrial neighbour, Rayden Engineering, totally ignoring the residents obvious efforts was busy erecting a massive steel palisade fence around the entire site - the fencing contractors had been booked for weeks!

We opened our garden gate and all we could (and still can) see is bars as this fencing is barely feet from the boundaries of our properties.

And this was just the beginning - so much worse was yet to come!

My first contact with Erewash Borough Council Enforcement, Mr Matthew Hall, did not go down well as he kept insisting that the steel palisade prision was perfectly legal and did not require planning permission and furthermore a developer could take any land which took his fancy but not in his actual ownership and there was not a lot the council could do about it.

Oh really? I had to point an officer of the council to his employer's own website which clearly stated that security fencing of this height required planning permission which it clearly did not have (after I had insisted he backtrack through 5 years of planning permissions on his easily accessible data base to double check as he had tried to insist it probably had an old planning consent, in which case we hadn't been notified anyway). Very reluctantly and if he found the time he would come out to look at the offending eyesore.

In the meantime the first of several police visits began, actually starting on the very first day the illegal fencing had been erected - accusing us of criminal damage to the fencing and threatening arrest if it was harmed in any way.

Erewash Borough Council's Enforcement solution to the fencing? Why - paint it green as it would make it invisible and none of the residents would notice it.

We knew by this stage that Rayden Engineering would destroy the now entombed trees as it was his intention to expand his heavy industry from 21 metres away to barely 3 metres away. He is not a considerate neighbour at 21 metres away and as he has never had to apply for any planning permissions there are no terms and conditions to his operations. From the early hours until late seven days a week is a constant deafening noise of grinding, shot blasting, pressure testing to such a degree normal conversation in our own gardens is impossible. To add to this we are constantly shrouded and coated with carbon, dust and red oxide particles. Now this engineering yard actually resembles an abandoned scrap yard of gigantic proportions, where employees frequently clamber the metal structures and clearly invade the privacy of our gardens and homes at 21 - not 3 metres away.

When I wrote to EBC Enforcement informing Mr Hall of Rayden Engineerings intentions I was hopeful that positive action would be taken to prevent the trees' destruction. After all, among many other species the trees was also a frequent bat habitat, supposedly protected by law. According to Local Authority guidelines they had a statutory duty and an obligation to ensure that any developer where bats were present had a full and independent ecological survey carried out.

Was any action taken? What do you think?

Barely two months after the steel palisade prision was erected, Rayden Engineering totally anniliated every tree, leaf and branch of this mature copse of trees. Total oblivion! Rayden Engineering then lied to the council by trying to blame McAlpine who had just moved into the area to construct a new bypass, saying they cleared the trees to park their plant on the land. As my husband is a civil engineer we knew that this was a load of cobblers, but McAlpine conducted a lengthy investgation into the matter which proved it was Rayden Engineering who had been lying to conceal its own culpability.

By this time the police visits had intensified, house to house inquiries, we had tried to shoot Richard Hayden of Rayden Engineering several times, several allegations of criminal damage, the police were regular visitors to our home on such a constant basis that the neighbours curtains had given up twitching long since! We had even sat one night and found ourselves surrounded by the Rapid Response Firearms Unit, who quickly established that it had been impossible to fire any shots from the angle of our property whatsoever and the voluntary offer of a search of our property for firearms was declined.

As I have mentioned, this land was a high risk Flood Zone 3 porous floodplain and as the dying trees were scooped up an uneven hard core hard standing with no drainage was laid in the place of porous floodplain.

After months of painstaking slog and being real nuisances with Erewash Borough Council, Rayden Engineering was forced to apply for retrospective planning permission. At last we finally got a say in "the democratic process" in matters so seriously affecting our living conditions in our own homes.

Finally after yet more slog EBC planners turned the retrospective planning application down with the recommendation that Enforcement Action be taken to remove the palisade prision back to its original position and the land be reinstated as flood plain.

A cause for celebration? I think not!! For although the development did not comply with Building Regulations, the Environment Agency positively objected to it as it was such a high risk flood zone, Rayden Engineering themselves admitted in their own flood risk assessment that the development would store and redivert flood water - sneeringly dismissing this to be "a minor issue", EBC Enforcement had an entirely different agenda to EBC senior planners.

After yet more pestering the enforcement section to comply with their own senior planners recommendations, Mr Hall of Enforcement then wrote to inform us that the fencing would simply be taken down to its legally required height and the hard standing was to remain as "it was an environmental improvement" and "the Environment Agency raised no objections".

Oh Really?

So after the Environment Agency was contacted, they in turn contacted EBC Enforcement who by return of post had a sudden change of heart and the hard standing was to be removed after all.

After months of waiting in vain for this miraculous enforcement to proceed, I eventually lodged an official complaint over enforcements obvious inertia. Of course the complaint was glossed over as I had to realise "enforcement action was taken according to seriousness and the number of people affected by the planning breach".

By this stage I had sent the borough council five letters accompanied by photographic evidence of the water logged mess the hard standing became after only a nominal amount of rainfall.

Of course the letters were all ignored, we had visited our MP several times, our borough council ward councillors weren't interested as one of the three stooges just happened to be a close neighbour and drinking buddy of Richard Hayden, the boss of Rayden Engineering, whilst the other has connections with Derbyshire Constabulary, who had also (if at all possible) stepped up their visits to our home.

At this stage we had tried everywhere and everyone we could think of and no one was interested in listening or helping us at all. Then out of the blue the police came down at midnight with a transit and cell and an escorting police car, dragged my husband out of bed, handcuffed and transported him miles away (complete with escort) strip searched, DNA tested, finger printed and photographed him before interviewing him at midnight when he had been awake for a total of 20 hours!

The heinous crime to warrant this treatment usually reserved for the Charles Mansons of society? Rayden Engineering had discovered a broken pipe among the scrap yard they call an engineering premises a whole 46 days earlier. As by this time we had started logging all the visits and complaints against us, I made an official complaint to the police over police harassment which was subsequently "investigated". A distinct pattern had emerged - we scored a hard won legal victory against Rayden Engineering and lo and behold the police would visit us with an allegation.

In the meantime still no enforcement action had been served and then the rains came. And we watched with dismal sinking hearts as the waterlogged puddles on the uneven hard core with no drainage now higher than our garden and homes began to fill up with run-off from Rayden Engineering's first higher extension of land also taken through adverse possession. And the water could not drain away through the land's now non-existent porosity or follow its natural diversion away from our homes as all the natural drainage had been radically altered - precisely what I had spent months telling Erewash Borough Council would happen.

Although the River Erewash was on flood alert, it never actually breached its banks at the lowest point associated with flooding and all the properties on the opposite side of the street the closest to the river never flooded at all - we did!

All 15 homes backing onto the unauthorised development, which EBC Enforcement had deemed to be a lower priority than other enforcement actions across the borough, flooded from the rear. The deep flood water remained trapped in our homes for over 14 hours as it had nowhere to go, it was completely trapped as its normal escape route had not only been radically altered by had also been dammed up by Rayden Engineering.

As we all stood in bewilderment in the early hours of that morning surveying all our ruined possessions, Rayden Engineering went swishing down the street at speed laughing and pointing at all the residents, including our 87 year old neighbour who stood on his doorstep in tears at the devastation. Perhaps one small glimmer was the fact that in his obvious merriment and glee at our ruined homes he failed to notice the borough council engineer who also witnessed his obvious delight.

Enforcement? They suddenly served enforcement notices 7 days after we flooded.

A happy ending at last? I think not! The enforcement notices were suspended as of course Rayden Engineering suddenly appealed against the refusal of planning permission. And would you believe that it suddenly transpired that they had cited me as the legal owner of the land all along. As I contacted the Secretary of State to accuse Rayden Engineering of submitting fraudulent documents to support an appeal that, as a trespasser without the legal land owner's permission, he would not have any right to appeal, it so turned out that he relied upon ordinary post for his last possible minute appeal and it was received out of time.

So with planning permission refused, an appeal refused - would the enforcement actions now become active again? I think not!! The borough council's excuse was that they thought Rayden Engineering was the actual owner of the land, despite several letters we had written to the council stating he was in fact a trespasser, and that the enforcement notices were not valid.

As I and my neighbours sit in our homes that are still stripped down to bare bricks and concrete still waiting for major flood damage repairs, some of us without any form of heating, others without even basic household appliances, Erewash Borough Council is now in negotiations with Rayden Engineering over the illegal hard standing with no drainage that was directly responsible for over £300 000 worth of property damage. It cannot discuss these negotiations between the council and the developer with us as presumably it does not affect us!

And as I sit and wait for the luxury of carpets and wallpaper in my home once again, secure in the knowledge that its all rather a waste of time as only one day's heavy rain as we head into winter could undo months of rebuilding work whilst the hard standing with no drainage in a high risk Flood Zone 3 remains, the police have reopened the case of national importance over the alledged broken pipe on Rayden Engineering's land.

We are still waiting for someone to assess our damage caused solely through negligence and it appears to me that none of the 15 homes and families affected have any rights at all. I thought it was our human right to protect our homes? I thought it was our human right for peaceful enjoyment of our possessions. I mistakenly thought it was our human right to be able to come home to the sanctuary of our own shelters without having to live like we have done, and will continue to do so for months.

I suppose if we had money and obviously influential connections, and indeed there has been many times when it appears that Rayden Engineering is not only running the council single handedly but also the police force, something would have been done for us long since.

If we all withdrew our council taxes tomorrow then Erewash Borough Council would acknowledge our existence immediately, yet in all other circumstances including materially affecting our most basic human rights - we are simply non-existent.

I will never understand why one developer, an underhand one at that who has lied and decieved even officers of the council, one who has fraudulently submitted official documents, continues to receive such perferential treatment at the expense and to the detriment of so many others.

Diane Charlton. Ilkeston Junction, Ilkeston, Derbyshire.

All documents, letters etc are available, everything I state is the undeniable and provable truth.

The story continues.
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