Travellers stopped from setting up in Newport
Thursday 14th July 2011, 3:33PM BST.
Dozens of police swooped on a redundant Shropshire car park after travellers attempted to move on to the site.
The travellers with about seven caravans attempted to set up camp on the former Focus DIY store car park in Newport yesterday afternoon.
Witnesses described angry scenes between the travellers and the police, who were trying to move them away from the area.
About 15 police cars and four riot vans, as well as dozens officers, attended the incident.
Officers were eventually able to round up the caravans and escorted the travellers away from the site.
A mother who was looking after her children in one of the caravans, and did not wish to be named, said: “They just want to move us on.”
A West Mercia Police spokeswoman said: “We were trying to prevent them from going on to the site.
“They were resistant so we had more officers than we would normally have.
“We split the convoy up and prevented them from going to another site and the incident was stopped at about 5pm.”
Once the travellers had left the area, a JCB was brought in to place several large boulders across the entrance to the gated car park.
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EXCELLENT work by our boys in blue keep it up. These folks need to be educated they have designated traveler sites use them or move on , the tax payer is fed up to the back teeth of cleaning up after you and in this current climate we are not going to put up with it.
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I am amazed that no lawyer has no taken up this case at our expense saying that this is an infringement of their human rights
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Why is it these people are immune to paying tax etc and never seem to get investigated by the Inland Revenue? Wish I could afford a new Range Rover!
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The truth is there is insufficient places for travellers to stop in.
The reality too is that travellers have been willing to establish their own sites and pay for them using their own money. Unless the planning system gives them much chance of gaining permission, then what do we expect them to do.
If they stop illegally people complain and if they try to find a way to get sites legally people complain. And as a result of all this complaining councils struggle to set up official sites, the problems continue and pitches end up costing ridulous amounts to simply provide pitches for caravans.
If we were pushed around day after day after day and wherever and however we tried to set up resulted in people complaining then I guess it would all become a fight for survival and we too would end up not caring about leaving rubbish behind too.
Travellers need places to stop and until that need is given some consideration we are being less than compassionate.
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Why can’t for instance we establish negotiated stopping places until something permanent can be sorted? It would cost less than evicting them, would be more compassionate and if folk were worried about them becoming permanent set time limits on them. They would also allow other problems to be dealt with, allow schooling and make taxation more easy to regulate.
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