Battle looms over site plea for travellers at village horse fair

The 2010 Seamer Horse Fair – held every July in the picturesque village near Scarborough – was one of the most trouble-free in years after Scarborough Council earmarked a site for travellers.

It followed major problems which occurred two years running when the visitors invaded Centurion Way, Crossgates.

When councillors voted to earmark the site for travellers on farmland north of the B1261, it was with the proviso that it should be for one year only.

Today councillors will be urged to lift that restriction at a planning meeting, making the site available every year to come for the period of the horse fair.

In 2009, the bill for the unauthorised traveller camp at Centurion Way reached nearly 12,000 – including more than 300 spent clearing horse manure.

More than 4,000 went on hiring security guards to police the area, and more than 1,000 on legal fees and process servers' fees as Scarborough Council went to court to evict the travellers.

The invasion cost Scarborough Council 11,593.82, and that did not include the cost of setting up the official camp at Stony Haggs Road, which many travellers chose to ignore, complaining the rain-sodden ground was too wet for their caravans.

It was the second year running travellers attending the fair decided not to use the sites provided and set up camp in Centurion Way.

The council took legal action to evict the travellers from the site in 2009, but to no avail, and the travellers eventually moved on when the fair finished.

However, last year the owners of more than 150 caravans and 80 horses followed council advice to camp on the 10 acres of land near the B1261. Today councillors will be urged to make the arrangement permanent – though opinion is still divided.

Scarborough Tory MP Robert Goodwill said: "I think last year's horse fair was the least troublesome we have had for many years.

"In fact, I have not had one single letter from any one expressing any disquiet about the site since it happened.

"There are a number of people who wish they would not come at all.

"But I think the council have come up with a good solution and I hope it solves the problem once and for all. Some of the problems in previous years have been confrontations between residents and travellers.

"Because of where the new site is, we do not get that any more which makes for a more reasonable and quiet horse fair."

He believed the arrangement could also satisfy Scarborough's wider obligations to travellers whereby there is presumption on local authorities to provide permanent sites.

"Because Scarborough provides a site where the travellers are here and gone in a week for this annual event we do not have to provide a permanent year round site for travellers," he added.

"So it seems to be the solution to a long running sore which has now been cauterised by the action by the council."

But Seamer councillor Helen Mallory said: "Reluctantly, last year I supported the site to prevent a repeat of the previous two years chaos.

"But in my view one year's experience is not enough to persuade me that the permission should be forever. The site is not suitable – it is in the middle of the community." She would press for permission to be restricted to another year and reduce access during the fair to 14 days rather than 21. She wants it to be decided with the benefit for at least two years hindsight and also to enable the process to look for better sites goes on.

"There here is no way anyone is celebrating – the celebration will be when they stop coming altogether," she added.