Old bedding, rubbish and human waste: bin bag Romanians turn exclusive garden square into a stinking squalid mess

- Outrage of residents in multi-million-pound houses around Bryanston Square- Romanians jumped over railings into locked gardens
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Romanian travellers have been sleeping rough in a private garden at an exclusive London address — prompting outrage among residents.

The group is thought to have arrived in Bryanston Square, Marylebone, at the weekend when they were seen jumping over the railings into the locked park, which is managed by a trust made up of people living in the surrounding multi-million-pound terraced houses.

Residents said they then watched the trespassers bed down for the night in the 19th-century square. Others were discovered sleeping near the bins on Monday morning and had reportedly left litter and human waste.

Retired solicitor Peter Rosenthal, 75, said: “I was coming home at around 8pm on Saturday when I saw a young man climbing over the railings. I shouted at him to get down and to come out of the gardens. I went inside and immediately called the police.”

Tom Flynn, 57, the caretaker at Wyndham House, Bryanston Square, added: “I went out to the bins early Monday morning and saw several sleeping bodies there. There was a lot of rubbish and it smelt of excrement. Myself and the other residents in the building are worried about them being here as it is a security risk.

“Personally, I am worried about the building and people trying to get in. Thankfully no  one has yet, but one of the ladies here said she heard someone rattling the front doors as if they were trying to get in.”

One resident, who asked not to be named, said: “The area now stinks of human excrement and is full of rubbish. As soon as you go near it, you can smell the urine. It is horrible. There are a lot of children who live around the square and their parents take them to play in the gardens when the weather is nice.

“We pay a lot of money for these gardens. They are beautiful— and not a public lavatory.”

It comes just two weeks after it emerged that a group of about 30 Romanian beggars had returned to Marble Arch, fuelling concerns of a repeat of the long-running problems that blighted the area last summer.

Pictures taken yesterday show men and women carrying bin bags full of their belongings across Park Lane before throwing them onto a walled area erected by a construction company. Piles of rubbish, disused sleeping equipment and human excrement could be seen at the base of the wall.

One witness said: “There were loads of them. They took all their stuff to the wall and then chucked it up. It must be an area that’s not being used by the construction company. The group then left and went about their days. They’ve made a sort of den near the trees too, at the bottom of the wall. There is all sorts of horrible stuff there — it’s disgusting.”

Nickie Aiken, cabinet member for community protection and premises at Westminster council, said the situation in the square was “typical of an endemic issue” affecting the capital.

She added: “The fact is that we have around 60 Romanians sleeping rough in Westminster, and we just do not have the resources to keep dealing with this. We are spending thousands of pounds cleaning up after rough sleepers, and that is council taxpayers’ money that should be going to pay for other things.

“We have absolutely no issue with Romanian people who come here to work and pay their way. The particular problem here is largely with Roma people, who have Romanian identity cards, some of whom drift into low level crime, nuisance and intimidation of the sort we have heard reported in Bryanston Square.

“We do what we can to break up these camps, but it is difficult for local people and I wholly understand their frustrations.”

A spokesman for the Met said officers were looking into the Bryanston Square incident.

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