Council’s £130k bid to stop travellers targeting park
PARTS OF THE DINGLE AND STUBBS’ POOL NOTORIOUS FOR ENCAMPMENTS
ONE of Nuneaton’s hardest hit areas for illegal traveller encampments is to have a £130,000 makeover to improve safety. Parts of The Dingle and Stubbs’ Pool have, over the last decade, seen many unauthorised traveller incursions.
Just a matter of weeks ago, at the end of September, a large number of caravans set-up home close to the park and play area. Councillor Clare Golby, deputy leader at the Town Hall, revealed that a successful bid for £130,000 safer street funding had been made and that it would be spent on improving safety across the area and measures to deter unauthorised traveller encampments.
She also confirmed that, having been challenged in court, the council’s borough-wide injunction against incursions on public land remains in place. In June last year, the Telegraph reported that the injunction was under threat.
She told a full council meeting that once they were notified it was being challenged in the high court, they ‘threw the kitchen sink at it’ to defend the council’s position. Following a decision of the court of appeal in February of this year, it was fully restored.
“It means it is fully enforceable by the police and includes the powers of arrest,” she said. “I, for one, am not willing to go back to the days of previous Labour administration when it was open season in this borough to the extent where our residents put up the ‘Welcome to the Butlin’s Holiday camp signs.’
“The Labour leadership saw the deliberate unlocking of our car parks and literally extended an invitation to the relevant groups to set up camps.” Cllr Emma Shiers (Camp Hill ward) had asked what was happening with the council’s traveller injunction.
She also asked if officers could confirm whether £100,000 had been spent on ‘target hardening,’ designed to protect areas from travellers. Cllr Golby said that the £100,000 had been set up since 2018 and had led to some measures being taken at Gala Fields, close to the Nuneaton Heritage Centre, and at the Jubilee Sports Centre - areas that had been repeatedly targeted by encampments,
She added that 1.5 ton concrete blocks have also been ‘strategically placed’ in some areas to try and prevent caravans being able to get in land. In regards to the Dingle and Stubbs Pool, she explained that the £130,000 Safer Streets funding would make the area safer.
She said: “£100,000 will be spent on improving entrances to the site and target hardening to slow and deter motorbikes. To enhance entrances for pedestrians and the disabled where possible by removing the duck-under bars and replacing them with either chicanes or barriers, adding bits of missing path, adding new metal trip rails and repairing existing stretches of the rails and or removing obsolete trip rails.
“£30,000 will be spent on improving lighting by converting them to LED and adapting key columns to carry CCTV cameras. Not only will it enhance the area and make it safer for residents, it will also help to deter future traveller encampments to the Dingle and parts of Stubbs’ Pool.”
I, for one, am not willing to go back to the days of previous Labour administration when it was open season in this borough
Cllr Claire