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This article is from the Guardian, printed 3 November, 2011. Please go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/nov/03/dale-farm-struggle for further coverage.

Dale Farm residents struggle on after neighbours' eviction. The conditions are horrendous but the mood is good humoured after a court order protected three pitches at unauthorised site

Written by Patrick Barkham guardian.co.uk, Thursday 3 November 2011 11.42 EDT

On an island of gravel surrounded by a sea of mud, Michelle Sheridan closes her caravan door against the stench of raw sewage and makes a cup of tea.

The kettle takes a long time to boil using power from a noisy diesel generator, which runs all day and night. The caravan shudders as the bulldozers smash through a plot next door.

Two weeks after riot police stormed the Traveller site in Essex, sisters Michelle and Nora Sheridan, their seven children and their mother, Mary Flynn, are still going about their daily lives encircled by chaos and bailiffs.

Despite the eviction of more than 80 families, the Sheridans and two other families remain and have a legal right to live on Dale Farm after a court order protected three pitches on the unauthorised site.

Basildon council is obliged under this court order to maintain services but the families say their water is contaminated and the council-supplied generators that provide electricity have blown up their washing machines and dryers. With all the mud, the Sheridans' clothes, sheets and rugs need regular washing: Michelle's last laundry bill was £107.

Clothes are drying on a broken fence. Sewage from a septic tank accidentally broken by bailiffs leaks across the rubbish-strewn soil.

"The people who are still here are the ones that desperately need to be here," said Michelle. "We've just watched our chalet being squashed. We lived there for 10 years and had so many memories. But the children are back at school and we're trying to keep it as normal as possible for them."

The council pledged to return Dale Farm to green fields at the end of the £18m eviction. But the former scrapyard has not been a green field in living memory, and it looks a distant prospect.

Almost all the chalets have been cleared away but dilapidated fences still wobble between empty plots. Contractors are instructed to dig down on each plot until they reach the soil but they only seem to have exposed a contaminated mess of subsoil, rubble and rubbish. Fragments of plastic toys that once belonged to children on the site are ground into the dirt.

Despite the horrendous conditions, the mood is good humoured. The protesters and the police have departed and the remaining Travellers say they have never met such nice bailiffs. The contractors are polite.

The tension rises, however, when council officials visit to discuss when the Sheridans will leave their pitch.

The family has agreed to move temporarily on to a neighbouring plot to allow the council to dig out the hardcore on their pitch. Then they can return – to mud, because the council says the gravel they want to put down is, in planning terms, hardcore.

"Once they get us out they are going to make the pitch uninhabitable," said Michelle.

The road through Dale Farm is to be removed, so the Sheridans will not be able to tow their caravans on and off their pitch. Instead, the council will provide a walkway to enable the ambulance service to gain wheelchair access for 72-year-old Flynn, who has osteoporosis and suffers chronic obstructive pulmonary disease that has left her with a lung capacity "barely compatible with life", according to court medical evidence.

Candy Sheridan, a former councillor who is representing the families, said their presence on Dale Farm was an embarrassment for the council and accused it of "low-level intimidation" to get rid of them.

"Basildon council wanted total site clearance. They are telling me they will abide by the court order. They are also saying the plots will be uninhabitable. The two things don't marry up. I want the families to live in peace on their lawful sites," she said.

Tony Ball, leader of the council, denied that its attitude was to remove the last Dale Farm Travellers from the borough at any cost. He said the families had been offered bricks and mortar accommodation.

"My personal view is why would they want to stay in the middle of what is still a building site?" he said. "I'm satisfied that what we've done is the right thing to do and I'm heartened by the progress we've made, which has been substantial."

The Sheridans say they will leave if the council approves a meticulously planned new application for a 12-pitch site nearby, which will be considered at an appeal hearing later this month.

"The best thing would be to give us permission for a new site nearby so we can care for the sick and our children can go to [the local] school," said Michelle.

But Ball cast doubt on the likelihood of the new site being approved, saying it had already been turned down on environmental and conservation grounds. "There was also an objection from Natural England, so as far as the council is concerned that land isn't suitable for any development either," he said.

"I keep saying to Basildon council, you are going to end up with the best Gypsy site in the world," said Candy Sheridan of the Travellers' revised application, which includes a nature reserve for newts. "Every time I say it their faces drop."