Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Travellers enjoy free illegal stay
Council ‘helpless’ to move on vehicles over bank holiday
Council bosses admit they continue to face a bureaucratic minefield when trying to evict travellers illegally occupying authority-owned land.
They have previously struggled to shift caravans from the Kingsmead car park in Canterbury, which led to the launch of a “review of procedures”.
But officials were again helpless over the bank holiday weekend when 50 mobile homes and vehicles rolled into a seafront car park and refused to budge for four days.
With the courts closed for Easter, the authority says it was left with limited options as the travellers enjoyed free parking in the prime Neptune car park in Herne Bay, blocking a launch ramp for boats and jet skis.
Not only was hundreds of pounds lost in revenue from visitors who would have paid, but the council faced a costly clean-up operation afterwards when the travellers finally left on Easter Monday.
The authority also admitted it did not slap parking fines on the vehicles for fear of “inflaming the situation”.
But it did ticket 24 other errant drivers elsewhere in the town over the same period.
Defending the action, its head of safer communities, Douglas Rattray said: “It has to be remembered those tickets were issued because someone was caught breaking the rules. Two wrongs do not make a right.
“We treated the situation as an illegal encampment rather than a large number of people committing parking offences.”
The caravans – some pulled by expensive new vehicles – started arriving on Thursday.
City council bosses responded to calls to intervene, but says it was again powerless to immediately move on the travellers.
Mr Rattray said enforcement officers were swiftly on site to “kickstart” the legal process.
“Our focus was on ending this illegal action as soon as possible to ensure the least amount of disruption to the town’s residents and visitors.
“It is undoubtedly the case that it was as a direct result of our efforts that a difficult situation that could have gone on for much longer was brought to a swift conclusion.
“People probably do not realise this, but the law requires us to carry out a welfare assessment in case we need to refer children, elderly and vulnerable people to other agencies for help,”
“We also have to issue a warning giving at least 24 hours for the camp to be dismantled and the service of the relevant notices to leave.
“If that does not work, we need to arrange a court hearing, serve the summons for the hearing and then persuade the court to issue an eviction order.
“The courts were closed until Tuesday. The encampment ended on Monday.
“We will review our security arrangements in light of the weekend’s events as a matter of urgency and explore all of the legal avenues available to us in order to prevent this from happening again.”
The council had to mount a clean-up operation after the travellers left when litter – including soiled nappies, takeaway packets and drink containers – was left strewn across the car park.
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