Homeless people living in an overgrown Chalvey park have been evicted by Slough Borough Council as it seeks to tidy up the area.

Dozens of people were found living in Stabmonk Park in between Seymour Road and the old Montem Leisure Centre after a fire broke out there last month. Councillor Gurchuran Manku – responsible for parks – said staff faced ‘physical threats’ as they cleared the area.

He said: “There were various challenges to completing the work, including physical threats to our workers, and difficult access for heavy equipment. However, our teams persevered and cleared a huge amount of waste.”

Neighbours on Seymour Road have said up to 15 people at a time had been living in Stabmonk Park for months before the fire broke out on July 8.

READ MORE: inside the hidden homeless camps of Slough

In the wake of the fire Slough Borough Council said it was working to clear up the park and remove the people living there.

It announced on Monday, August 5 that it had rehoused six homeless people found living there, moved three others on and that employment and housing was found for one young person in another borough.

The council also told the Observer it had rehoused five people following the fire in July. But speaking to the Observer last month Shin Dhother from Slough homelessness charity Slough Outreach said that simply moving people on wouldn’t solve the problem.

He said: “People move around. They don’t stay in the same place. When you get enforcement officers come around people just go to another place and it just goes on and on.”

Slough Borough Council took ownership of the park in 2020. It had previously been run by a community trust, but volunteers weren’t able to look after it and the council took over the trust.

The council had hoped to use the park as green space for residents at the housing development it planned at the Montem Leisure Centre site. But after going effectively bankrupt in 2021 it sold the Montem site to developer Bellway Homes.

Stabmonk Park stayed under the council’s ownership but it has become neglected and overgrown – and its trust hasn’t filed accounts to the charity commission since 2022.

Now Slough Borough Council says it has begun work to bring the park back into community use. It also says it will ask the community for its thoughts on a long-term maintenance plan now in the works.

The council said: “Several tons of waste was removed, ranging from trees and weeds to furniture, compressed gas canisters and even human waste. This has helped to improve the overall environment and made the park area safer and brought back into use.”