Pickles calls time on country sites for travellers

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles is to revoke the "planning circulars" issued by the former Labour government which set out strict requirements for town halls on the provision of land for gipsies.

Many Yorkshire councils had resisted the pressure to create new legal sites.

Mr Pickles is also looking at ways of increasing local authority powers to tackle unauthorised encampments, which are a source of major community tensions across the country and in parts of Yorkshire.

At the same time, however, councils are to be offered

financial incentives for developing authorised sites where possible.

As the Government seeks to increase the provision of traveller sites, they will be included in a new homes bonus scheme under which councils will be paid for properties they allow to be built in their area.

Travellers on official sites are also to be given the same rights and responsibilities as residents of other mobile home sites so that they have greater protection against eviction.

Mr Pickles, a former leader of Bradford Council, said: "Unauthorised developments have created tensions between travellers and the settled population.

"We want to redress the balance and put fairness back into communities.

"Like the rest of the population, the majority of travellers are law-abiding citizens and they should have the same chance of having a safe place to live and bring up their children. These changes will put travellers who play by the rules on an equal footing.

"But at the same time, we will not sit back and allow people to bypass the planning rules that everyone else has to abide by.

"That's why we will strengthen the powers that councils have to enforce against breaches of planning rules and tackle the abuse of the planning system."

Across Yorkshire, illegal encampments have caused serious problems for residents, councils and private landowners who have been forced to pick up huge legal bills for evicting them, cleaning up afterwards and repairing damage to land which has included football pitches and school playing fields, as well as industrial estates.

Last week the Conservative MP for Dewsbury Simon Reevell wrote to Wakefield Council leader Peter Box to complain about plans for an official site for gipsies and travellers at a recycling centre off Owl Lane, Ossett, near Wakefield.

Mr Reevell accused the authority of choosing a site as far away from the city as possible and claimed residents were not being consulted.

Wakefield Council said it had a statutory duty to allocate land for use by travellers and gipsies.

But Mr Reevell said the targets had been scrapped.

The council said the plans had been put out to public consultation and meetings were taking place to allow people to have their say.

The Yorkshire Post has revealed in recent years the massive cost to taxpayers in dealing with illegal travellers' sites.

Leeds Council's annual bill for legal fees, security and cleaning up regularly tops 100,000 and is sometimes as much as 300,000.