Travellers upset by noise, dust and traffic

6:59am Sunday 26th August 2007

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Travellers waiting to be moved from their home of 36 years have criticised the Olympic authorities for exposing them to excessive dust, noise and traffic.

The Clays Lane travellers' community on the Olympic Park is to be moved to a site off Major Road, near Leyton, by the end of this week.

The travellers are now the only people left living in Clays Lane.

The Clays Lane co-operative housing estate has been cleared of people and the old University of East London (UEL) halls of residence are also deserted.

Lorries, diggers and security guards are working around, and travelling past, the community every day and the people living there say they are making their lives a misery.

The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) demolished low rise UEL buildings close to the site earlier this year and this, according to the travellers, created large amounts of dust and noise.

Mother-of-two Lisa Smith, 31, has been living on the site all her life.

She said: "We are so upset about the way we have been treated. Gates bang all through the night, security guards shout and there is a lot of dust.

"I have got asthma and my doctor told me they should not be doing any work while we are still here.

"We are being treated like this because we are travellers, they would not be doing this if we were living in houses, they don't realise we are human beings too."

Mrs Smith said that some of the construction workers in the area have been wearing masks to stop them breathing in the dust, but the travellers have not had any protection.

She said: "When we got the Olympics I was celebrating. But I never realised how badly we would be treated or how much we would have to suffer for the Olympics."

The community was angered by the ODA's assertion that the travellers themselves have caused air pollution by burning PVC insulation off copper cables in a furnace.

Mrs Smith said: "We have not even got a furnace. It is clearly a log-burner, which is only used to burn wood, and that has not been used since March."

THE Olympics Delivery Authority has now agreed not to demolish the housing estate buildings until the travellers have been relocated. It has also installed two additional dust monitors, a noise monitor and erected hoardings around the site.

A spokesman for the London Development Agency (LDA) said work on the Major Road site is on schedule and the travellers will be able to move there by the end of this month.