Travellers evicted from old pools site
HEAVY POLICE PRESENCE AS PITCH AT YIEWSLEY SWIMMING POOL IS EVACUATED
TWO men have been de-arrested after police helped evict a group of travellers, during which a police officer was bitten by a dog.
Metropolitan Police sent several officers to an abandoned site, formerly Yiewsley Swimming Pools, where a group of travellers had set up camp.
Blue wooden hoardings in place at the site had been torn down and several caravans were parked inside on land that has been empty since the pool was demolished in 2010.
Police in Hillingdon attended the site in Otterfield Road at around 5.45pm on Wednesday August 8 and oversaw their eviction from the land.
During that process, two men were arrested by police on suspicion of public order offences.
On Thursday August 9, a spokesman for Metropolitan Police confirmed to getwestlondon that both men have been de-arrested, but added that one police officer was bitten by a dog in the incident. The spokesman added that the officer had received minor injuries as a result of the bite.
Yiewsley Councillor Shehryar Ahmad-Wallana was also present at the site, where photographs show the blue hoardings which surrounded the plot have been smashed down in places.
The travellers had appeared with several caravans at the site previously occupied by the Yiewsley Swimming Pool, which was closed in 2010 and demolished.
Hillingdon Council, which ran the facility, said at the time that it would be replaced by a leisure and health centre, and planning permission was given for a £7million facility at the site - but no work has yet been carried out.
The council repeated the promise at the end of 2017 when it pledged another year of council tax freezes.
The lack of swimming pool, despite promises made by the council, has been a source of friction with the local community, many of whom fear that the land will instead be used to build flats.
Cllr Ahmad-Wallana added in a post to the West Drayton & Yiewsley Community Group on Facebook that the site would guarded by “security personnel” following the eviction