An Epping resident has said her children have been unable to play in their garden this summer because of drunk protesters urinating on trees.
The concerned mother, who lives opposite the Bell Hotel said the twice-a-week demos were ‘absolute hell’ and noisy chants were making it impossible to get her baby to sleep at night.
She told BBC Essex: ‘Our life has just changed. We can’t leae the house when the protests are going on. It’s just not an environment for children to be here.
‘It just doesn’t represent Epping and the people that live here.’
The mum said it was ironic that protesters were making her family’s life a misery while claiming to be campaigning to protect women and children from supposedly dangerous migrants.
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She said the environment on the road was akin to a ‘festival’ with protesters carrying beer cans in their hands.
‘There are people there who are respectful and leave. But I would say those people seem to have fallen away and what’s left are the extreme right wingers who are just causing havoc for the area’, she said.
‘I just want life to get back to normal. This is such a lovely town.
‘We have children and we want them to be raised in a town that’s tolerant and kind.’
Epping has been the epicentre of the ongoing debate about hotels housing asylum seekers.
On Friday, an injunction ordering the Bell Hotel be cleared of asylum seekers next month was overturned by the Court of Appeal after judges found the original decision to be ‘seriously flawed in principle’.
Epping Forest District Council said it was ‘disappointed’ by the result and is now considering taking its case to the Supreme Court.
The ruling was a relief for the Home Office, which says it aims to close all asylum hotels by the end of this parliament in a ‘controlled and orderly’ manner.
However the impact of the regular protests has taken its toll on the area, with several residents complaining about
The mother explained that every morning she fills bags of litter left behind by demonstrators, including smoke grenades, flags and empty beer cans.
‘These aren’t people that care about England’, she continued.
‘This is a 900-year-old forest and they’re treating it like a rubbish tip. It’s horrible. Absolutely horrible.’
Her views were echoed by other locals who felt their town had been ‘hijacked’ by protest groups who are not from the area.
James Chappell wrote: ‘I’m fed up with the protests, the destruction of the common, the litter, the graffiti and the hijacking of our local Facebook groups by people who don’t even live in our town, just to ply their rhetoric.
‘I wish they would all go away and leave us and The Bell in peace.’
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