Legal action due over Traveller site
AFAMILY of travellers including children and pregnant women are facing legal action after refusing to leave a former allotment site in Widnes – claiming they have nowhere else to go.
Ruabin Price and his family bought the land in Factory Lane, Widnes, last year with the aim of settling there permanently, but failed to apply for planning permission to convert the site to residential use.
With no permission in place, Halton Council decided to take enforcement action against the family, issuing a temporary stop notice on June 10 this year.
The notice required the family to cease using the land as a base for their caravans and stop any building work associated with converting the site to residential use.
The Prices had 28 days to comply with the stop notice, but so far have not done so and a spokesperson for the council confirmed on Friday that the local authority will now take legal action against the family for breaching planning controls.
In the meantime, the family has submitted a planning application to allow them to keep living at the Factory Lane site.
In it, the Prices say they settled on the land because they had nowhere else to go.
The application states: “They have spent many years camping on various transit sites and pitches at the side of the road, which has taken its toll on the family over time.
“They consider that it is essential for their personal health and mental wellbeing that they seek a more settled base, given that the family group includes children, expectant mothers and persons with medical conditions that require access to medical facilities.”
The application goes on to argue that they cannot move to the official traveller site in Runcorn because it is full and they fear ‘friction’ with other families there.
The family has also claimed the council issued the temporary stop notice ‘without any discussions or investigations whatsoever regarding the family, their personal needs or their personal circumstances’.
This is not the first time the Prices have fallen foul of planning laws.
Last August, Halton Council issued an enforcement notice for the same site after the family had built a large area of hardstanding without planning permission
It required them to return the land to its previous state.
The Prices appealed against the enforcement notice, but their appeal was rejected in March this year.
The family has said it intends to comply with the notice.
The family has also been targeted by vandals in recent months, with criminals stealing livestock and spraying antitraveller messages on containers at the site.