Council urged to set up site for travellers

SEFTON Council is being urged to set up a new transit site for travellers in Formby after an unusually high number of traveller encampments in Southport over the summer.

Council and police officers had a busy few months serving notices to 20 illegal camps, on council sites such as the Tulketh Street car parks, the Splash World car park and the former Kew park and ride site, as well as on the former School for Hearing Impaired Children in Birkdale.

Councillors at Southport Area Committee have now urged Sefton’s Cabinet to pay £20,000 a year to fund a transit site for travellers in Formby which they hope will ease problems next year.

At the meeting Claire Taylor from Sefton Council spoke about the issues facing the local authority when trying to move on travellers.

She revealed that council officers are currently looking to review how they deal with such cases, but admitted their efforts to move with any speed are hampered by the legislation they worked under.

She said: “We have had quite a large number of traveller encampments over this sum- mer particularly.

“We had around 20 encampments over the summer months, most of them in Southport. “That’s around twice the normal number. “We have to carry out welfare checks when they arrive – we then begin serving eviction notices, a process which takes up to a couple of weeks.”

She went on to give some idea of the costs left having to be paid by local taxpayers.

The arrival of around 60 vans at the Kew park and ride site in June led to around £1,000 in staffing costs for Sefton Council, with £600 for the clean-up operation, as well as the costs of fixing damage caused to the barriers where travellers forced their way in.

Another encampment at the Splash World car park led to £360 for clean-up costs.

Sefton Council is now looking into the possibility of providing a potential traveller transit site off New Causeway just off Liverpool Road, Formby.

The site would provide for up to six pitches which may, for a short term stay, accommodate up to 12 caravans.

The site would cost Sefton around £20,000 a year to run, a sum to which it has not yet committed.

However, even if the site was established, there was no guarantee it would be used – or that other, illegal encampments would stop.

Fiona Townsend, a legal officer with Sefton Council, said: “If the temporary transit site was full, or if the travellers refused to go there, there is nothing the council could do.”

Southport town centre councillor Tony Dawson was involved with many of the incidents last year, such as when travellers took up both Tulketh Street car parks, and moved onto spaces on the Splash World car park.

He said: “A lot of people in the town are resentful that travellers are on the car parks and yet parking attendants are not going round issuing them with car parking tickets, as they would with anyone else.

“It does come across as one rule for one and one rule for another.”

Birkdale councillor Simon Shaw put forward a motion calling for Sefton Council’s cabinet to agree to paying £20,000 per year to fund a transit traveller site off New Causeway in Formby.

Sefton Council’s current policy states that it is the responsibility of the landowner to initiate the removal of any travellers.

When travellers park on council land, that responsibility rests with the council.

The local authority can remove travellers from any land, but it is the council’s policy to give the landowner the opportunity to remove them.

The police also have powers to deal with unauthorised encampments in certain circumstances.