Hundreds of gipsy sites for Yorkshire

The controversial plans, from a Government Regional Spatial Strategy, say 255 additional pitches need to be created in the county by the end of this year, with a further 18 across areas including Craven and South Lakeland in Cumbria.

The plans come despite Government figures showing that last year only 90 new pitches were built across Britain, 14 of them in Yorkshire.

The proposed sites have not been revealed, but the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority announced in its draft housing development plan this week that no sites will be allowed in the Dales.

The leader of Selby District Council, Mark Crane, whose authority is currently seeking up to 2m of Government funding to help contain the growing number of travellers, said: "My big fear is that this will encourage more people to come in.

"We have seen a large influx of people coming in at the moment and over the last nine months illegal encampments spring up across the district.

"Frankly the idea of building this many sites is plain ridiculous and will leave a lot of people very anxious."

A member of Richmondshire District Council and North Yorkshire County Council, John Blackie, said: "This seems an amazingly high number to me and it is an unnecessary target.

"This is going to cause real controversy in some of the areas where there is clearly going to be a high number of allotted sites for travellers.

"In 15 years of being a district councillor in Richmondshire I have never been made aware of requests for additional sites for travellers.

"This is a highly emotive issue for residents who are going to be affected by this."

The Yorkshire Post revealed last month that taxpayers across the region are paying tens of thousands of pounds a year to deal with illegal traveller camps as councils resist Government pressure to find land and build legal sites.

A survey of local authorities showed that hundreds of illegal camps are being dealt with every year.

In Leeds, there were 740 complaints from the public about 126 illegal camps last year, 69 of them on council land.

They cost the council 286,000 in clean-up costs, legal and security fees.

In Kirklees, the bill for dealing with 24 camps in three years was 48,000 and Doncaster was landed with legal bills of 29,000 in three years.

Wakefield's legal bill over three years was 13,000 and North Yorkshire County Council forked out 11,000 over 64 unauthorised camps in three years.