By 10am it was eerily quiet. The previous day saw market traders, hundreds of shoppers and families enjoying lunch alfresco in the late summer sun. But by Thursday morning Braintree in Essex was a ghost town.
And then, shortly before 11am, the first minibus arrived like clockwork from Wethersfield asylum accommodation site and a group of young men disembarked, smartphones in hand, one wearing a Covid-style mask to hide his face.
‘They hang around the bus station and they whistle at the schoolgirls coming off the buses,’ complained 66-year-old local Mike Readon. ‘It’s horrendous. Lots of women just avoid the town entirely
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