Eyesore Caravan to be towed from outside park
ARAMSHACKLE caravan covered in handwritten messages will be removed by the council if it is left unclaimed.
The vehicle has been creating an eyesore outside St Andrews Park in Bristol, having been left at the side of Effingham Road for several weeks at least.
Bristol City Council has now slapped an enforcement notice on the window, stating that it is investigating to check if it has been abandoned.
Its owner has until today to contact the council, after which point it will be towed away and impounded.
They would be fined £200 and made to pay a release fee if they wanted to get it back after that point. The caravan is in a poor state, with smashed window panes and a messy interior. It has been almost completely covered in handwritten messages, some of which allege that the council itself was responsible for dumping the vehicle.
One read: “This trash belongs to Bristol City Council and has done for the last four years when it was last here B4 Sedon Road where BCC dumped it last time.”
“Can you not get the number of these fly-by-night tippers?” says another.
“Free for colection [sic]”, “scrap come and get it” and “big up Beverley” are among the many other notes penned on the bodywork.
A council spokesperson said: “The caravan has been identified as unoccupied. Any vehicles removed from the highway as abandoned or illegally stored are stored for collection and disposed of if not collected.’’
It is not the first time residents have complained about vehicles being abandoned in the area, and some have spent years campaigning for a residents’ parking scheme (RPS) to tackle the issue.
A disgusting image shared on Facebook in January, on the Friends of St Andrews Park page, showed mould growing on a steering wheel inside a car.
It had allegedly been left there for more than six months, opposite the park entrance, but enforcement action was not taken until its tax ran out. The resident who posted
the photo urged people to support the RPS, to “stop vehicles being dumped around the park”.
Another resident, responding to the post, said the situation had become “ludicrous”.
In 2018, neighbours created a traffic campaign group and Bristol West MP Thangam Debbonaire organised a public meeting to address the issue. A survey was carried out by the council last year to ask residents in St Andrews and Bishopston if they would welcome a residents’ parking scheme. The restricted zone, if brought in, would introduce a permit system to restrict on-street parking to residents. There are already 17 other RPS zones in other areas of Bristol.