£40,000 bill for traveller clean-up

AT LEAST £40,000 of taxpayers' money has been spent over the past three years clearing up the mess left by travellers on encampments in East Yorkshire, new figures have revealed.

Officers at East Riding Council were asked to publish the full cost of the eviction, repair and clean-up operation following damaging incursions at a site on the Hessle foreshore.

Staff were called in last July to eject a large group of travellers which had been staying illegally on land in Livingstone Road.

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Although the group, which took about 30 caravans to the site, was moved on, its members went to extraordinary lengths to access the site – smashing street lights, cutting down a tree and removing reinforced bollards to get onto the site under cover of the night.

The bollards had been put up to keep them out after a previous visit in March.

In a new report to the council's environment and transport overview and scrutiny committee next Wednesday, officers say at least 40,000 has been spent between 2006 and 2009 clearing up sites like Hessle foreshore and Gypsy Road playing fields in Bridlington.

The report also reveals that the authority issued 16 notices for travellers to quit land in the past year, four of which ended up going before magistrates. Each notice costs the taxpayer between 65 and 520. In the same period York Council issued 23 notices.

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The cost of 50 welfare assessments, carried out by the Gypsy Liaison Service, was 1,727.

A review of accommodation for gypsies and travellers in the East Riding found a shortfall of 32 permanent pitches. The report says different groups of travellers – from the relatively settled groups who work locally and register their children with the local education authority, to more nomadic travellers – have different needs.

The report said: "This means whilst the use of legal powers to move a group of travellers off a piece of land may be quite successful it does not always mean that the group will leave the area completely.

"Some groups will leave completely and then return at a later date; other groups may just relocate a mile or two away in the same parish. Some families have been relocating in the same two parishes for years now."

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The report, by the council's director of environment and neighbourhood services Nigel Leighton, said work would continue to address security of the most sensitive sites, but conceded there is "a limit to what can be done to successfully deter a determined trespass".

Enforcement action against travellers found on unauthorised sites is rare, and the council said court orders requiring travellers to move had been complied with without the need for further legal action.

Neither authority in the East Riding or York has prosecuted travellers over illegal encampments in the last two years.

When such a camp is discovered a council gipsy liaison officer is dispatched to assess the site. Police aim to visit unauthorised camps on the day they are given notice of them.

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East Riding Council is meanwhile pressing ahead with plans to build a 1.4m site to house travellers off Bessingby Hill Road, in Bridlington, despite some residents claiming it will be an eyesore.

The site, which is being built with Government funding, will replace the travellers' site in Woldgate.

The report said: "The redevelopment of the Woldgate site will have a positive impact on the travelling community that tend to reside in the Kilham area as some of the families may be accommodated on the site."