Angry Purfleet residents are taking matters into their own hands with ‘protest blockades’ on London Road after reporting noisy lorries breaking hours restrictions on local sites.

Around five to ten residents joined forces on Thursday January 14 and again on Tuesday January 19 to block off London Road with their own cars, causing angry confrontations with lorry drivers.

Residents say the companies using the sites are in breach of council planning conditions forbidding 24/7 operations, and they have been forced into taking direct action after 18 months of sleepless nights.

Complaints have been submitted to the council from around 20 residents about lorry noise coming from council-owned Kappa Yard and Cornwall House Yard late at night and early in the morning.

Terry Debenham, 57, of London Road, said the “spontaneous” double-parking would continue until the companies followed the rules.

Mr Debenham said: “All we want is for the lorries to stop. It’s been going on for 18 months. You can’t sleep at night because of the sound and residents are basically suffering from depression. They get woken up at night because of the noise and a lot of them have young children who can’t sleep too.”

“If the council won’t sort it we will and this is only the start. All we have had so far from this regeneration is the country’s biggest rubbish tip and noise from lorries 24/7. We intend to plan a bigger protest in the near future if the lorries continue and we are now going to double-park cars whenever we want to protest as it stops the lorries getting through.”

Leon Rudman, 37, of Riverview Flats said: “People are angry, it’s never been great but it has got progressively worse. The lorries have been causing us hassle for months and months, the sound of them accelerating down our small road is deafening. On a scale of 1 to 10, it’s 8 or 9, it’s grim.”

Keith Yanni, 52, of Riverview Flats said: “It’s terrible. It’s too small a road for lorries anyway, but to make a bad problem worse, lorries are roaring down there from early evening till the next morning. My five year old granddaughter is put to bed at 6pm but she’s woken up all night.”

A spokesman for the council said: “The company at Cornwall House Yard has been given notice to quit and we should get the site back on or before February 11, so we can start work on making the car park.

"The council has written to the tenants of the other sites highlighting the planning restrictions and if the breaches continue, we will seek to recover possession of these sites too.