UPDATED: TRAVELLERS who have set up camp on council owned land near Crab Lane, Fearnhead, Warrington, have ignored a notice to quit the site by 4pm yesterday (Tuesday).
Five caravans and associated vehicles entered the site next to sports fields on Sunday.
Local residents claim the travellers were able to access the site because the padlocked barrier had been left open.
Warrington Borough Council, who instigated welfare checks, have confirmed that a section 77 notice had been served ordering the travellers to vacate the site by 4pm Tuesday.
Failure to do so will result in court proceedings.
The travellers were still on site Wednesday morning.
Warrington Borough Council has now started legal proceedings to evict the travellers from the site.
A court hearing has been listed at Warrington next Tuesday (July 11) at 13.45pm to seek eviction.
Video footage courtesy Chris Digata.
9 Comments
Welfare checks again?
Last time travellers held the golf club to ransom for a few hundred pounds!
Exactly what Eagle said…. how many welfare checks do these people need? Do they move now to say Callands and get more welfare checks and then on to Birchwood for more welfare checks?…. Ridiculous
Surely once they have been ‘welfare checked’ and moved off one local spot the police/council/whoever should have the powers to immediately move them of the next place they descend on it’s still within our borough boundary.
Just take their vehicle regs, their caravan make model and mug shots of them all….easy !
I was going to say take a record their caravan’s unique and registered CRiS number which gives owners details too but I doubt they will have those 😉
A simple solution would be to allocate land for a transit site.
Get your money out then…
Jake, other authorities have received Government funding via HCA for setting up transit camps. The basic requirements are for parking spaces and toilets. Travellers on permanent and official transit sites are required to pay council tax to cover the running costs of the sites. ‘Butlins’ style sites have been set up in other areas but not proved successful as travellers don’t want to stay on them due to the higher council tax costs.
I think the answer for Warrington would be a transit site with just basic services and thus low council tax costs. Previous estimates given to set up a transit camp have been in the region of circa £2m, – thus it seems WBC propose to include more than the ‘basic’ requirements (is this to try to maximise council tax payments?) is more than ‘basic’ really necessary?
The situation at the moment (no transit site) must be costing a substantial amount per year – it would be cheaper in the long run to provide one!
Another problem is, where to site a camp – no-one seems to want one on their doorstep. A fair way of allocation would be to choose a number of sites, in different parts of the town and use these on a 3 to 4 year rota.
The fact is, every town has to provide some facilities, the sooner WBC do this the better. All this illegal camping is disruptive and expensive
That is a great idea…. I believe Ireland is a nice place, maybe they could build a few there
I wonder if they have moved today as apparently 4 or so caravans and associated vehicles have now landed at the Harvester in Westbrook..or is that another lot descending on us.